


Jack Of All Trades

by SpellCleaver



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Angst, F/M, Faeries are subspecies of humans, Gen, Magic, Mentions of Slavery, Resurrection, The Archerons are witches, Tragedy, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-01-06 05:03:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 34,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12204417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpellCleaver/pseuds/SpellCleaver
Summary: A Modern Mythology AU in which the Archerons are The Weϊrd Sisters, Azriel gets turned into an ass, a tattoo saves Rhys's life, and lightning in a bottle is really, really controversial.





	1. Fey Sands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Archerons are out during a lightning storm, Feyre and Rhys run into each other once at the beach, and Rhys gets a tattoo.

It was August, and the as-of-yet beautiful weather had now consented to let a thunderstorm clear up its mess. The night sky was veiled by clouds, so the three girls walking through the muddy fields couldn't see the stars, but the youngest girl liked to imagine that the great forks of lightning lit up the sky with all the brilliance the stars possessed, like an over-dramatic understudy.

The rain came down in sheets, with brown hair dark with water pasted to pale foreheads as they walked. The middle child - the youngest of the three in spirit - completely ignored the entire point of the rubber wellies she was wearing and leapt into the nearest puddle. The splash soaked her already-wet scarlet robes brown, and the eldest sister clucked her annoyance. The youngest just smiled.

"That's going to interfere with the magic, Elain," the eldest chided.

"Yeah, it will," the middle child replied. "The rainwater'll help my herbs grow. No need to be such a killjoy." Her sister sighed.

The youngest asked teasingly, "And I suppose your divine powers have told you that?"

"Yeah." The muddied one's tone was playfully belligerent. "It's called the divine power of a botany textbook. Oh, and _common sense_." She cocked her head, and flinched when the motion sent damp clumps of hair flying into her eye. "I thought you were the one who always went on about this."

The youngest laughed. "Sorry if I've gotten used to you two talking in fucking riddles all the time. It gets really annoying eventually."

"Your lack of creative wordplay is hardly our fault," the eldest one objected. "Now shut up, both of you. The next lightning strike will hit in a few seconds, and you want to be ready. Have you got the bottle, Feyre?"

The youngest rolled her eyes and produced a large glass bottle apparently from nowhere. It seemed to shimmer with a sort of iridescence that was independent of any light source. "It's right here, Nes."

"Good," the eldest said stubbornly. "Then let's begin." She glanced up. "Cauldron knows when we'll get another lightning storm again. . ."

**.~*~.~*~.~*~.**

"You know, it's said that this beach has such golden sands because every year on Midsummer's Day faeries come here to dance and cast their magic."

Feyre didn't even have to look over her shoulder to know who it was. "Piss off, Rhysand."

"Now that's just rude," he commented, coming to sit down next to her. She reflexively flicked shut the small painting pad she'd brought, so he couldn't see the painting, despite the fact the thin paintbrush and palette that was still cradled in her lap betrayed what she was doing. He raised an eyebrow at her actions, but didn't comment.

She resolutely looked away, towards the sea where her sisters were splashing about and laughing at each other. "I take it you had the same idea as we did?"

"To take advantage of the rare Velaris sunny day and enjoy it while we still can?" He folded his arms behind his head and lay back against the ground. His wings twitched as they came in contact with the burning sand - Feyre remembered how Rhys had once told her that Illyrian wings were especially sensitive to temperature changes. Something to do with a primal mating ritual evolution hadn't seen fit to rid them of.

The sheer number of subspecies of humans in Prythian occasionally boggled her mind.

"Effectively," she answered, not quite able to keep a smile off her face as she looked back down at her sketchpad. She flipped it open again, and went back to painting. "Elain begged us."

"I can see why." He hummed for a contented moment, and then asked, "So you're not swamped by work today, then?"

She swallowed. Rhys was a passing acquaintance - alright, _friend_ \- she'd made from the University of Velaris, one she didn't know very well. He didn't know about the financial situation her family was in, or what they'd had to do to get out of it; any jokes he made about her overworking were borne of her intense commitment to her studies whilst inside the university. He didn't know how many jobs she worked, or how hard she did outside of school, or the fact that despite what prowess her magical abilities might give her, she still struggled to make ends meet.

The comment still hit a little too close to the mark, though.

"Not today," she said with forced lightness, suddenly finding the meticulous blending of the green and blue hues of the sea to be an intensely fascinating task, rather than an outright bother.

Rhys followed her gaze, and stared at her painting of the scene for a moment, before looking at the water himself and asking sympathetically, "Not one for the water, then?"

"Oh, I am." She jabbed the brush, bristles flecked with white paint, at the depiction of her sister's dark silhouette, until the sea spray shimmered around Nesta like a curtain of glitter. "I'm just not in the mood for swimming today."

"Some weird witchy ritual preventing you from interacting with water, huh?" She could hear the feigned nonchalance in his voice, and knew he was just winding her up, but she needed the distraction, so went along with it.

She sighed, loudly and theatrically. "Rhysand, I've told you before: Just because a witch or wizard has magic, it does not mean they have any obligation or desire to use it. Some of us don't have enough magic _to_ use." She made eye contact with him, and suppressed a smirk at the glint in his eye. "We've been over this."

"But you use magic," he observed.

"I do." She turned back to her painting. "But that's beside the point. The point is that not every witch or wizard participates in every rite of passage or ritual, anymore than every Illyrian is a cocky, swaggering idiot with biceps bigger than their brain." She gave Rhys a pointed look. "Although you and Cassian _do_ try to convince us all of such things."

He held her gaze for precisely five seconds before they both burst out laughing. Rhys stood up, brushed the sand off his trousers, and presented her with a deep, exaggerated bow. "Always a pleasure, Feyre."

"I wish I could say the same!" she shouted at his retreating back, though her smile belied her words. He made a rude gesture over his shoulder; unseen, she stuck her tongue out at him.

"Very mature, Feyre," she heard Elain's voice comment, and she shot her an innocent look. Her sister's body stood between her and the sun; Feyre squinted to look up at her. Elain had her hands on her hips.

At her sister's raised eyebrows, Feyre relented. "Oh, go back to splashing about in the sea," she grumbled, and shrieked when Elain flicked freezing water in her face.

Again.

**.~*~.~*~.~*~.**

Late that afternoon, when the sky was turning violet, then crimson, in a blaze of fiery gold, Rhys ducked into the tattoo shop, silently cursing Cassian to his last, dying breath.

Although his friend would argue that in no way was he at fault for this, not when it had been Rhys's idea to have another competition. And perhaps it had been a bad idea, but in his defence, he'd always won before! Flying through the mountains was his passion and pastime, and he had been able to fly the fastest of all three of them for years.

But since starting at the university, and been introduced to the gargantuan workload known as "homework" he'd, for one, regrettably been unable to keep up the hobby he'd once enjoyed daily, and, for another, been completely unaware that Cassian had been picking up the slack in his absence.

Prick.

So now, since he'd lost the race _and_ the bet, he was fulfilling his end of the deal, and getting another tattoo. Not that he didn't like getting tattoos, but the idea of having a permanent mark of his own arrogance and ignorance on his body wasn't an appealing one.

The door to the shop creaked as he swung it open. The sound set his teeth on edge, like something out of a horror film. But the place was well lit, with spider plants and cacti arranged around the receiving room in a homely sort of way, and it was very clean and welcoming. He awkwardly approached the front desk. "I made an appointment here, under the name _Night_ , for today?"

The woman at the desk - her nametag read _Alis_ \- checked the computer. "Yes, it's here. Paid all in advance?" He nodded, and she typed something out. "Very well. Take a seat by the window and flick through some designs. Someone will be out to assist you in a moment."

Rhys nodded, and went to sit in the seat next to the cactus in the corner. He stared at it for a while - he was fairly sure, even in beautiful and diverse and magical Velaris, that cacti weren't meant to be blue - then began to flick through the sheets of designs.

Maybe he could get a tattoo in white ink, so it looked like a scar? Then he might not have to explain when it meant to anyone curious enough to bother asking. But no - he was sure his darling cousin, the overseer of this ill-fated bet, would find a way that the idea broke the meticulously planned out terms and conditions of theirs.

So if not, then he might as well get something cool. Something that complimented the numerous tattoos he already had over his chest and shoulders. Something like that design there, with the three concentric circles spreading outwards like ripples in red, amber and green, and the little blueish-black curls that formed tangents to the outermost one. Yeah, that would do.

No sooner had he decided that he heard a familiar cough. He jerked his head up to see Feyre Archeron raising an eyebrow at him, standing in the doorway through to the back rooms.

"Rhysand Night?" she asked, sounding like she was trying to suppress a laugh. "Have you decided on a design?"

He nodded, and jabbed a finger at the selected one. "This one. Protection," he added, reading the name of it aloud. It was probably modelled off an old, disused rune from the old dialect of Velaris that meant something along the same lines.

Her eyebrows rose even higher, but she nodded. "Come on through, then."

"Wait. . ." He choked on the word. "You're the tattoo artist?"

She crossed her arms in an oddly defensive position, though her voice was forcibly neutral. "Yes. What of it?"

His face burned at the thought of having to explain the bet to her, his and Cassian's antics, and decided she didn't have to know. "Nothing, darling," he said instead, throwing in a wink just to cover up his nervousness. He was sure his hands were sweating.

"Alright. . ." she let the word trail off, her face that particularly annoyed expression she seemed to reserve for Rhys and Rhys alone. "Come on through then. And bring the sheet."

Rhys did.

He left a few hours later, his collar bone stinging. Feyre had been quick and professional, but she rarely initiated conversation, so it'd been up to him to lessen the awkward silence when it got too much for him to bear. And she spoke with him easily enough (barring the subtle jibes she made in response to his own) but whenever he brought up her frankly _odd_ mannerisms as the hours passed, she clammed up instantly.

But he'd felt the itch of magic in the air. He assumed it was something to do with that.

He didn't think about the strangeness of the situation again until the tattoo, quite literally, saved his life.


	2. Donkey in the Rhododendrons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azriel gets himself into an awkward situation. Elain isn't sure how to react.

There was a rustling coming from the bushes. Elain poked her head out of the window to squint at her garden. "Hello? Is anyone there?"

A strange braying noise drifted out of the rhododendron shrubs and she cocked her head at it as the pale pink blossoms, their petals drooping slightly in the intense summer heat, quivered on their stems. "Hello? Who is it? Why are you hiding in the flowers?"

There was no reply save for the faintest whimper, like another bray had been forcibly suppressed. She frowned, and stood up.

As she walked towards the back door, she said, "Well, I'm coming out to look now, so you can come out on your own accord or you can stay hiding amongst the shrubs and ruining my rhododendrons. Thanks for that by the way," she added when she stepped outside and saw the path of bent and broken tulips, starting at some point near the vegetable patch and ending where she assumed the sounds were coming from. "Look at the poor flowers; they're all beaten up." She stooped to inspect one of them before continuing on her way.

There was still no reply.

She sighed, and ran an eye over her wrecked garden. Oddly enough, the tracks appeared to have materialised right in the centre of the area, nowhere near the gate, or even a wall. Maybe the intruder was a winged species, or one who could jump very far? There were those Peregryns she'd seen about town occasionally. . .

"I'm coming over now, so if you're not going to come out then just don't. . . thrash. . . or anything. You've done enough damage as it is." She scowled, an expression she'd always been told was at odds with her gentle demeanour. She was really quite annoyed about that.

She ran her eyes over the bushes. It was a big garden they had, useful for growing the necessary herbs for the potions and healings Elain traded in, but also difficult for Feyre, the main breadwinner of the three, to find the money to maintain. They legally owned all the land around the manor, as the Archerons had for generations, but she knew her youngest sister struggled to find the funds to supply her with shovels and bulbs and other gardening necessities. Elain tried to help, but the only thing she was really good at was gardening and herbal magic, and nowadays authentic witchcraft was either considered quaint, or simply fake.

When people weren't suspicious of it, that was. Thankfully, they'd moved past the whole "burning people at the stake" thing several centuries ago.

The rhododendron bushes were situated in a cluster not far from the greenhouse, surrounding a small bench where Nesta liked to sit and read her books. One could see them clearly from where Elain wandered down the garden path, the blossoms supernaturally purple and pink and amber and red and even (due in part to the magic that had permeated the soil over the years) black with twisted silver strands running through them, like spider's webs. The shrubs were plenty tall enough to hide a full grown human male, if that was who was hiding there, although admittedly it could be anyone and anything.

She narrowed her eyes at them, noting that the one sporting fat orange blossoms was trembling the most, so she made a beeline for that. She was three paces away when she saw two grey, furry ears sticking up from amongst the flowers.

She froze for an instant. _What on Earth. . .?_ "Who's _there_?" she asked incredulously, her tone making it clear that she'd seen the ears poking up perfectly well, thank you, and now she'd like an explanation for what a pair of donkey's ears were doing in her rhododendrons.

There was another peculiar braying sound - _the noise a donkey makes_ \- before someone sidled out.

Elain stared at them for a moment.

Then she burst out laughing.

The man was tall, with tan skin and an elegant, delicate face that seemed at odds with his thickly muscled torso. Two large wings sprouted from his back, ones that Elain recognised as being shared by that man - Feyre's friend - Rhys. Illyrian wings, her sister had called them. ( _That_ explained how he'd gotten to the centre of the garden without leaving tracks.) His expression was one that seemed tailored to be unreadable, but she thought she detected some embarrassment under the façade as well.

Not that she blamed him - she would be embarrassed were she in his situation, for sure.

Because instead of the rounded humanoid ears she knew Illyrians to have, great fluffy donkey ears sprouted from the sides of his head. They twitched with every noise in the vicinity.

Not to mention the hooves she now saw that his dark brown trainers couldn't quite hide.

Not to mention the protruding front teeth that looked substantially thicker and heavier than the human ones next to them.

Not to mention the long tail with the tuft of hair at the end of it she could now see swinging nervously behind him.

Between two hooves where his hands should be, he clutched a lone yellow chrysanthemum, the rest of them scattered and crushed in the grass at his feet.

Once Elain had finished her tirade of laughter, tears were streaming down her face. She delicately took the remaining flower from its precarious position in his hooves, and tossed it aside into the bushes. When she did, she took the chance to glance at the track through the garden. Sure enough, the man's journey had started in the chrysanthemum patch.

Still chuckling slightly to herself, she turned back to him and asked, "You were trying to pick flowers?"

"Yes." His voice was low and soft - apparently the donkey curse only affected involuntary noises, not speech.

She should her head good naturedly. "Then _this_ ," she waved a hand at his new physique, "is your own fault."

"In what way?" There was a dry humour in the man's voice, like he acknowledged perfectly well how he'd gotten into this situation, and accepted the backlash and ridicule that would surely come with it. It was an oddly calming tone. "I didn't ask to be made an ass."

She laughed again, and shook her head, going to sit down on the bench. The man sat next to her. "Don't you know better than to steal from a witch's garden? They're always warded with nasty curses. If you wanted flowers, you could really have just asked," she added, with a pointed glance at the crushed flowers underfoot. He had the decency to look sheepish. "Then you might not have torn up half my garden, either."

"Apologies," the man replied. "I'm usually nimble enough to avoid ruining flower beds, but once the curse hit, I'm afraid I quite lost my head."

"Hex," she corrected automatically.

"Excuse me?"

"It was a hex. Curses are usually fouler, and can impact a person's whole family. They're also semi-permanent - meaning, you have to track down a cure or spell in order to reverse them. Hexes should wear off within a few days or so, maybe even hours." Her eyes glinted as she glanced over him. "But considering I'm pretty sure this is my little sister's work, it might even be longer. She can be vicious with spells sometimes."

"Talent, or just a natural proclivity for anger?"

"Neither," Elain admitted. "Feyre just really likes chrysanthemums - she did some of the protective hexes on my other flower beds, and none are as bad as this. Sure, you might have had a raging itch on your backside for a week if you'd gone after the sunflowers, and you might have found that some random object like car keys or hairbrushes or pens might have been attracted to you like a magnet for just as long if you'd been set on stealing cornflowers, but none as bad as the chrysanthemums."

"Some poor judgement on my part, then," he conceded. "It's just that my friend was looking for the perfect flower to give her girlfriend on their anniversary, and her cousin directed me to here, claiming that the most beautiful flowers in Velaris came from this garden."

Despite herself, Elain felt a blush warm her face, and was sure she was lighting up like a bauble on Yulemas Eve.

She tried to save face by saying, "Well, count yourself lucky you didn't try to pick snapdragons - they're Nesta's favourites, and her hexes put Feyre's to shame. Whoever your friend's cousin is, they're probably slightly sadistic to send you on a wild goose chase such as this. I mean, sure, you'll find pretty flowers. But at the end of the day, is it really worth walking around with donkey ears for a few days to get them?" A moment of silence passed, and then, "I'm Elain Archeron, by the way."

"I'm Azriel," the man replied, a faint grin tugging up the corners of his mouth. "Did I hear you mention someone named Feyre Archeron?"

She nodded. "My younger sister. Have you met?"

He shook his head. "No, but, as I understand it, my friend - the one who sent me here - attends the university with her. He talks about her quite often."

"Ah." She stood up, and brushed off her floral-patterned skirt. "Well, would you like to come inside, and we can see about getting you home? I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do about the donkey ears or hooves, except advise that you wait for the hex to wear off. And I'm afraid there's no way of knowing how long that will be."

"It's alright - I'm the one who trespassed here anyway." He stood too, the donkey tail twitching as he did. "And you're not concerned I'm lying? That I might be here to harm you, or something? I can't believe you'd let me in that easily."

"If you were here to harm me," she said, enunciating clearly as she met his gaze, "you wouldn't have gotten onto the estate without a bombardment of curses wiping you off the face of the earth."

He visibly swallowed, but it was with a small smile that he said, "Curses? Not hexes?"

"Curses," she confirmed. "Nasty ones. I suppose you flew here?"

"Yes, but. . ."

"You don't want to fly back in this condition, in case you meet anyone you know along the way?" she finished. He nodded. "Not a problem - Feyre took the car out today, but I can call a friend of yours or something to come and pick you up. Anyone in mind?"

"Rhys," Azriel said instantly. At her raised eyebrows, he elaborated, slightly dryly, "I'd like to have a conversation with him about his choice of flower venue."

She snorted. "Seems fair enough." As they passed the patch of chrysanthemums, she held out a hand. "Wait." She bent down to eye level with the flowers, and pulled a pair of shears from the pocket of her apron. She selected a few, undamaged flowers, gently cut them free at the stems, and gathered them into a bouquet in her hands. Azriel watched with curiosity.

Once they were outside, she found some brown paper to wrap them in, and handed them to him. "Take them," she insisted at his querying look. "And tell your friend congratulations on her anniversary from me."

Azriel smiled. "I will. Thank you." He reached for his pocket then, and pulled out a phone in a dark grey phone case. "I'll go phone my friend, now."

The conversation was brief, as was the wait, Rhysand turning up within ten minutes. Considering the manor was at least a twenty minute drive from the main bulk of the city, and that was before you even factored in the time he'd spent on the phone, Elain had to wonder about what level of recklessness Nesta would consider his driving to be on.

The doorbell rang soon enough, and she let Rhys into the living room, where Azriel was waiting, his tail waving idly behind him. The Illyrian took one look at his friend's predicament, and let out a loud guffaw.

"You know," he said, flopping down on the sofa next to Azriel, "I was hoping it would be Cassian who went picking flowers in the Archerons' garden - my revenge, you could say - and got hexed. But it's just as funny on you."

"You're a prick."

"That'll do, Donkey. That'll do." Rhys smiled a winning smile, and looked over at Elain. "I hope he didn't bother you too much?"

Elain crossed her arms over her chest and attempted to look annoyed. "It was a minor inconvenience."

"My apologies, then." There was laughter in his tone as he looked from his friend, to her, then back again, and said, "I'm surprised you didn't curse him on sight, given his intimidating appearance and the fact he was trespassing-"

"Had he ill will against myself or my sisters," she interrupted, "the protective wards set up by our ancestors would have annihilated him long before I realised he was there."

Rhys's eyebrows shot up. "Annihilation? Bit overkill, isn't it?"

"Not back when witch burnings were a grand day out for all the family," she said coldly. He tensed at the words, and looked almost apologetic, though there was something thoughtful about his expression as well.

"You look a lot like your sister when you get that expression," he remarked.

"Which one?"

"Either." His smile was thin.

She wondered why she was being so combatant for an instant, how he'd managed to get a rise out of her so easily, and began to realise why Nesta had always complained at length about Feyre's friends.

She looked over at Azriel instead. "Do you want to go now? Or," she added, checking her watch, "Feyre should be back within the next half hour. We can wait for her, and see if she has any way of reversing the hex sooner than waiting for it to wear off."

"That's quite alright-" Azriel began, but Rhys interrupted.

"Feyre will be here soon?" She nodded. "Then let's stay."

She tilted her head at him, and noticed his fingers drift to his collarbone, where a design of concentric circles was tattooed in stark black and white.

"I have something I need to ask her."


	3. Red, Amber and Green

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhys has an interesting encounter.

Rhys had been late working in the university's library on his latest batch of astrophysics homework, and it was dark, the sun's lingering presence in the sky negated by the towering building on either side of him, by the time he walked home.

He felt antsy as he did, like his latent High Fae instincts were firing warnings signal after warning signal down unused nerves. _Run_ , his magic insisted. _Run, stick to the main streets, stay as safe as you can. Monsters are on the prowl tonight_.

But given his late father's enemies and their penchant for murder and extortion, monsters was perhaps the one subject Rhys wished he wasn't a professional on.

Something flickered in the night and Rhys whirled, keys in hand, to find himself facing a blank wall. An old, tattered poster nailed to it fluttered in the wind, the crude cartoon of a water wraith proclaiming something or other about a swimming event that had taken place several months before. Rhys forced himself to relax.

There was no reason to panic, after all, wasn't there?

The sky was still a reddish-violet, but none of the light that afforded it that colour could penetrate the street level - not in this part of the city, with all the hundred-year-old massive residential buildings and trees. Streetlights glowed like dashes of yellow highlighter at regular intervals, but the light that spilled out only illuminated spheres around them, and the rest of the street was left in thick darkness. The peak of Velaris's tallest mountain, Alpha Astra, shone crimson in the sky.

But this wasn't out of the ordinary. Rhys had been born and raised in the shadow of the mountains, and when you spend enough time in the darkness the darkness begins to stare back. He walked home this way everyday, sometimes when the sun had set further than this, and he had never been this jittery - had never come to any harm.

So what was different this time?

His wings twitched, and after a moment's consideration he magicked them away, feeling mournful when their familiar weight disappeared from his back. But Illyrians weren't common in Velaris, and if it was possible that whatever his instincts were warning him about might attack him, it would be better to appear as High Fae than have his large, vulnerable wings get caught in the fray.

Hand still clutched tightly around his keys, he edged from one pool of light to another, and shivered when an especially cold breeze blew down the street. There'd be some frigid weather sweeping away the remainder of summer soon enough, if that was anything to go by.

He eyed the path ahead, hating his apprehension but obeying it all the same. From here it was a short five minute dash through an alleyway to the car park where his car was, but with this sort of terror breathing down his neck, dare he? Should he go the long way round, all the way up and down the hill, and jump at every flicker of shadow he caught a glimpse of? Or should he just get the journey over and done with?

_Oh, fuck it_.

He took off for the alleyway with a dramatic stride, his arms swinging perhaps a little _too_ vehemently, but it made him look bigger and made his paces longer and faster, so. . .

_Cassian is going to tease the hell out of me later if nothing happens_ , he realised glumly, slowing a little in the gap between the buildings. He was being paranoid. He almost wished something _would_ happen, just so he wouldn't lose all faith in his instincts, and he'd have an excuse for being so jumpy-

A slim white hand shot out of the darkness to grasp his throat.

Rhys squawked his surprise a moment too late, as the hand (and the person undoubtably attached to it, he realised belatedly) lifted him off his feet with strength surprising for its diminutive size, and threw him into the wall.

The _crack_ that echoed through the alley he heard more inside his ears than outside of them. His head spun, his eyes blurring. Through the haze of pain and tears he could see a pale, feminine figure in front of him, vaguely tall, with a shock of scarlet hair-

_Shit_.

Amarantha squatted in front of him and used one meticulously kept fingernail to lift his chin up. He blinked fiercely, trying to regain _some_ semblance of clarity in his vision, and her carved face came into terrifying focus, inches away from his. He tried to throw himself back - _too close too close too close_ \- but he just collided with the wall again.

Her eyes roved over his face as she smiled sweetly at him. Those eyes. . .

When he was younger, he'd had an argument with his sister on whether there was such thing as black eyes, or if they were simply a very, very dark brown. She'd championed the former, he was insistent on the latter, and by the time this precise woman had convinced him he was wrong, Lyra had been. . .

_Lyra. . ._

"Hello, Rhysand," Amarantha crooned.

It was more reflex and overwhelming, consuming anger than thought that led to Rhys attempting the punch her in the face.

But she was quicker (she was _always_ quicker, she was _stronger_ , too, _how was she so strong_ , she was only High Fae, still _human_ ) and she caught the punch, swiftly delivering a debilitating kick to his abdomen. Winded, he slumped back again.

"Tut tut, Rhysand," she scolded. "There's no need to be so uncooperative. As always, I'm not here because of _you_ making trouble." _Because you never do,_ her eyes taunted. _You're worthless, a pawn, lesser compared to your relatives. Can you only make ripples, when they make a splash seem inadequate?_ "It's your charming family members."

"You leave Mor and Andromache alone-" he began heatedly, fully prepared to spit in her face, but she scoffed halfway through his rant.

"Oh, not _her_ , though I'm sure she'll make a nuisance of herself soon enough. Morrigan always did know how to disappear at the right times."

_Then who?_ He shouted silently. _Everyone else has been killed - everyone else has been killed by_ you _!_ "I have no other living family members."

"No, that you don't," she agreed, her tone slightly too filled with glee to be considered regretful. "But people don't have to be alive to cause problems, do they? And Velaris is such a magical place, with such a rich history of war and ruin and art and rebuilding and the other inconsistencies of human habitation. It would be so easy for a ghost to manifest themselves here."

_Ghosts?_

He'd known that some people believed in them, but . . . He'd always thought. . .

It was as ridiculous. As ridiculous as half the witchcraft non-witches tried to sell you. "Then. . . who?"

Amarantha smiled, and leaned in. "Your sister," she whispered, "is a _very_ powerful ghost. She cannot be dispersed by any of the usual methods - ordinary tasers and electric currents aren't strong enough to dispel her. But perhaps your suffering is what will persuade her to be a little more reasonable."

His throat was dry. Lyra, Lyra _, Lyra_. . . No. No, no, _no_.

In a voice so hoarse he hardly believed it was his, he choked out, "Please. Leave her alone."

"Not so long as she refuses to leave _me_ alone, dearest Rhysand," the woman purred. "And I assure you, I'm looking forward to picking up where we left off the last time I saw you. . ."

Rhys had to close his eyes against the onslaught of images her words brought up. "Leave her alone," he repeated weakly.

"I have no choice but to," Amarantha agreed. "After all, she's incorporeal and I cannot physically hurt her. But I can hurt _you_." She gripped his chin again, and he jerked away. She let him; he could tell she was enjoying this, in the twisted, sadistic way she always did.

"And believe me, Rhysand," she added, almost flippantly, "I _will_."

So fast he barely saw it, her hand shot out and gripped his neck again. For a moment her nails brushed his jugular, pricking at the skin, and then she _squeezed_.

He choked on his breath as his eyes fluttered shut. He couldn't _breathe_ , and-

There was a burning on his collarbone-

The hand released his neck-

There was a _pulse_ that racked through his body-

He was never aware of closing his eyes, but it was like he took a long blink before his vision returned, and came to just in time to see Amarantha fly backwards, and collide with the wall opposite. She didn't get up.

His collarbone still burned.

Scrabbling at his throat, he undid his shirt and stared at the tattoo Feyre had given him less than a week before. The concentric circles - _rings_ \- were flashing, the colours each alternating between red, amber and green. Even as he stared, the flashing grew slower, less frequent, until it finished altogether, and the tattoo was back to its previous inanimate design.

He cast his mind back to the day he got it, the faint surprise on her face when he'd asked for _Protection_ , the hum of magic in the air, the witch who gave it to him. . .

_I need to talk to Feyre_ , he decided. It couldn't wait.

He was in his car on the way to the Archeron Manor up in the mountains when he received Azriel's phone call ten minutes later.


	4. Vaguely Sensible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feyre provides some much-needed answers.

Feyre's shift ran well past seven o'clock, and it was dark by the time she got home.

The familiar shiver of magic running through the car's beaten up interior as she crossed the extensive wards around the manor relaxed her somewhat, but she was still undeniably tense when she pulled into the driveway - tense, and inexplicably _tired_. It had been a long day, but she was used to it, wasn't she?

She shut down the car and leaned back in her seat. A sigh escaped her before she could think to stop it, and she realised her eyes had slipped closed a moment before common sense had her snapping them open again.

Inside. She could fall asleep inside.

Early September shouldn't see days this dark at this hour, she mused, but it wasn't like she could do anything about it. The porch light blinked on as she staggered up the steps to the front door, brushing past Elain's lovingly tended lavender beds, and jabbed her key into the lock. Her hand trembled slightly in the cold night air, but she got the door open and shut behind her. She slumped against it, the heels of her hands pressed into her eyes.

"There she is," said a muffled voice, and footsteps came from the adjacent living room. The woman opened her eyes to see her sister's concerned face frown at her. "Feyre, there's someone here to see you." Then she moved closer, took Feyre's hands in hers, and said, quieter, "Are you alright?"

"Fine," she whispered in reply. "Just tired." She forced herself to straighten up, and flashed her teeth in a bitter smile. "You said there were people here to see me?"

Elain bit her lip. "Yes. They're just in here."

Feyre nodded her affirmation, and made a move to head over there. "Is Nesta in?" she asked distractedly, hand on the doorknob.

Elain's face went dark then - if it had been worried before, now it was caught somewhere between mutinous and downright distraught. "No. She's staying over at Tomas's."

_Ah_. "Is she-"

"She refuses to listen to my council."

_Indeed._

Well, she would deal with the aftermath of that when it came around; there was no dissuading Nesta when her pride got in the way. Especially on matters such as Tomas Mandray.

"Well then," Feyre chirped with a false cheer. "Who's here to see me then?" She didn't give Elain the chance to answer before she pushed open the door. _"Rhysand?"_

The irritating friend she'd sat through nearly a year's worth of astrophysics classes with was, indeed, sitting in her living room, next to another Illyrian. Something seemed off about that one, but she didn't look for long enough to decipher it, instead focusing on her friend. "Hello, Feyre darling."

"What are you-"

"I'm here," he interrupted loudly, glancing out of the window with more than a little paranoia - apparently he didn't want to waste any time, "about _this_." He yanked the collar of his shirt down to reveal the tattoo she'd given him not a week previously. She raised her eyebrows.

"You-" Realisation hit her then, and her words stuttered into an incomprehensible mess. "You activated it _already_?" Indeed he had; she could sense that the power source she'd put into it was depleted. "What sort of university student gets into so much trouble that a tattoo designed to save your life gets activated within a week?!"

"About that." Rhys's voice was tight and grim. _"Why the fuck do I have a tattoo that can save my life in the first place."_

"I don't know!" She was shouting now, she knew it. She didn't care. Instead, she flung her arms up and gestured wildly to thin air. "You're the one who specifically requested the _P_ _rotection_ rune! Excuse me for actually doing my job and giving it to you for the proper price and quality!"

Elain seemed to have shrunk back against the wall as if she would come to bodily harm if caught in the crossfire between the two members of the shouting match. The Illyrian Rhys was with looked faintly amused; Feyre switched her gaze to glare at him and did a double take.

He was part donkey.

"You tried to steal the chrysanthemums," she observed with the faintest hint of humour. The man - apparently one of few words - just shrugged, and gave her a small smile.

Shaking her head, she turned back to her friend, whereupon her smile froze on her face.

"Look, Rhysand, it's not my fault that you didn't bother to read the accompanying description to the tattoo _you chose_. I was just doing my job. So if you have any questions about it, ask them, but you don't need to be so snippy about it."

She sighed as he rolled his eyes. "You're one to talk."

"It's late, and I've had a long day; I'm tired," she answered curtly. She snapped her fingers in an oddly threatening way. "So ask your questions."

"Right." He slung an arm over the back of the sofa, and his face took on a contemplative look. "What, exactly, does this tattoo do, and what situations does it do it in?"

She passed a hand in front of her face even as she took a seat. Elain, apparently sensing a temporary ceasefire in the legendary Archeron-versus-Night arguments, took a seat next to her on the sofa.

"It's, well." She took a breath. "It's a protection tattoo." The words were bald. "It doesn't help against petty pain, like paper cuts or grazes or, Cauldron, it wouldn't even save you from a broken leg. Only when it becomes life or death - or a close enough approximation to it - does it kick in. I _was_ wondering why on earth a vaguely sensible person like you felt the need to get such a drastic protection."

"Okay." Rhys nodded. "Ignoring the whole 'vaguely' comment, is the protection an ongoing thing, or are there a set number of times it can help?"

Feyre gritted her teeth as she realised Rhys had already used one. _What the fuck did he do?_ "A set number," she explained. "I charged you for three and that's what you've got - though if you've already used up one in less than a week, good luck surviving until the end of the month." She eyed his shirt, where she knew the tattoo was residing just beneath it. "Speaking of which: How did you manage to already get into a life-threatening situation?"

Rhys paled, then. He swallowed several times, blinked a few more, then said in a forcibly flat voice, "It was nothing."

_Right_. "Okay then." She frowned, then added, " _Usually_ there's a set number, but if you still have the tattoo in perfect condition after the last one's been used up it will continue to work."

Rhys frowned. "How is that possible?"

"It'll instead draw on _my_ magic reserves, as the tattoo artist, to rescue you. But," she added as a dry afterthought, "since drawing on a witch's natural reserves can lead to several days bedridden with a severe case of vomiting and an appalling lack of energy, _please_ get that thing removed once your last two rounds are up. I don't particularly want to risk dying because you couldn't keep yourself out of trouble."

"It could _kill you_?"

"It killed our mother." Elain was uncharacteristically solemn as she said it.

Rhys's eyes flicked to Feyre's seeking confirmation, and the girl gave a shrug she didn't feel even as she nodded. "Obviously that's not the whole story," she said. _Not by a long shot._ "But that's essentially what happened."

Rhys swallowed, opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, then closed it again. He exchanged a glance in with his donkey-eared friend, and it the end it was him who said, "Was your father upset? Did he know how to save her?"

"Our father was gone by then." Feyre didn't miss Elain's flinch at her bold words. The two Illyrians certainly shut up at them.

In the silence that followed, she turned to the man who'd tried to steal the chrysanthemums. "I don't think I caught your name," she said pointedly.

He blinked, then smiled. "Oh - I'm Azriel, Rhys's friend. And I'm sure your sister could summarise the situation I found myself in earlier this evening much better than I could." Feyre glanced at Elain, who grinned and mouthed _Later_.

_T_ _hat_ would undoubtably be an interesting tale.

"And I was hoping you might know something about reversing _this_ ," he added, waving a hand at his ears. Feyre frowned.

"Actually, I'm afraid I can't. The hex was designed to be irreversible save by time." She paused. "Or was it thyme?"

At Azriel's faintly bemused expression, she explained, "Old spell books can be a right pain when it comes to rhyme and riddles. You could always try looking in the public library - I know the librarian, an accomplished wizard himself, and I know that Velaris's collection of spell books isn't one to be disputed. If there's a counter curse, you'll find it there."

At his downcast expression, she felt obliged to add, "Until then, I could provide you with a charm that'll cast a sort of glamour over the donkey aspects. So long as people don't know that you're using it, they won't see through it." She cast a sly glance at Elain. "Unless, of course, my dear sister would rather I let you walk around like this in retribution for trying to take her flowers without asking."

Elain's eyes went wide at the thought. "It's fine!" she squawked. "It's absolutely fine!" Rhys laughed to himself.

"Right then," Feyre said, launching herself off the sofa and onto her feet. "I'll go get it now."

She returned with a small bracelet threaded with delicate glass beads, each of which seeming to have some sort of thread of coloured dye suspended in the very centre, like a marble. Rhys stared at it, transfixed, as Azriel slipped it over the hoof onto his wrist.

"It won't last forever; both spells will eventually wear off," Feyre warned. Elain nodded her agreement; she knew enough about hexes and charms to answer that at least, even if it was Feyre's field of specialty. "And it won't do anything for what _you_ see and feel - those hooves will probably still be a right nuisance when you have to look through books. But it might help."

Azriel nodded. "Thank you. And thank you, Elain, for the flowers." He gestured to a wrapped bouquet sitting next to him. Feyre restrained the urge to raise an eyebrow as her sister blushed.

"You're welcome," Feyre said bluntly. "Now, get out. I'm sure Rhys will want to get home before he gets into _another_ life-threatening situation, and Elain and I need to make dinner before going to sleep. It's been a long day." She stood up. "Rhysand, Azriel, a pleasure." She swept out of the room.

She was gone too soon to hear Azriel's murmured comment, "I think your tendency to be over-dramatic might have rubbed off on her."

Nor did she hear Rhys's oddly wistful reply: "Maybe it has."


	5. The Illusion of Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhys has another... run in... with Amarantha.

The next day passed without incident, though Rhys found himself continually glancing over his shoulder.

Logically, he knew he shouldn't be afraid, since Feyre had explained that he wasn't at any risk of dying any time soon - the ill-begotten tattoo ensured _that._ But she'd also said that it didn't do anything against a) minor pain, b) major pain, c) excruciating pain, or d) someone he loved dying.

Which was why he was so jumpy, and why he'd had to refrain from phoning Mor and Azriel and Cassian over and over during the day just to make sure they were still alright.

Theoretically, Amarantha hadn't said she'd kill him, had she? She'd simply said that she was sure his suffering could convince his. . . sister. . . to change her mind about harassing them. 'Suffering' could cover all sorts of bases, and the removal of fatalities from the list did little to decrease his foreboding.

He was still antsy when he staggered into his student flat hours later, after enduring an astrophysics lesson of Feyre giving him sidelong concerned glances, and a passing acquaintance named Cresseida even going so far as to stop him in the hallways and ask what was wrong. He'd brushed her off with a forced smile and a quip, but it had unnerved him that he was apparently so easy to read.

He sighed as he got the key into the door, and stumbled inside. Maybe he could make himself a hot drink, go to sleep early, watch a film, force himself to _relax_ -

"Fucking hell," he said out loud, like his bravado might make the terrible fear go away. "What are you doing in my flat?"

Amarantha smiled at him from where she was sitting in his favourite armchair. "Rhysand," she greeted, then inclined her head towards the other chair, the one he used to entertain visitors (or rather, the one that Mor had bought for herself since she'd gotten bored of sitting on the floor). He glanced at the door once, but she raised a thin eyebrow, and he knew there was challenge in it. Knew there was probably someone waiting for him if he fled.

He took a seat, feeling slight chagrin at the fact she'd stolen his favourite chair. It was a petty thing, but one that put her in control even more.

"How lovely to see you again, darling," she began sweetly, tapping her fingers against the arm rest. Rhys found his gaze drawn to that hand - to the bone ring it bore. He swallowed, remembering young Jurian's screams, his eyes writhing in his face, his-

"What do you want?"

She just smiled, shaking her head. "I hear you've enrolled in the University of Velaris - studying. . . astrophysics, was it?" He twitched, his only sign he'd heard her. What was she _doing_? Amarantha didn't make small talk. "A nice subject - a bit pointless in my mind. After all, what are you going to do with that degree when you leave? Study burning balls of gas millions of miles away and neglect the actual problems in day to day life? And astrophysics is so hard, anyway," she mused. "I suppose it's pulling all the intelligent people out of useful career paths, isn't it?"

He didn't say anything. His jaw ached, but he didn't trust himself not to shout or scream or say something stupid if he unclenched it.

"But then again," she continued. "You were always one of those children who looked up at the stars and _wished_." She narrowed her eyes at him; he had the peculiar sensation of being gutted like a fish, and stripped to the bone with that stare. Like she was dissecting him as she would a particularly perplexing specimen. "What do you see when you look at those distant stars, Rhysand? Light in the dark? Gods and goddesses willing to listen to your pitiful pleas?"

"It's none of your business why I might be interested in my field of study," he ground out. "What. Do. You. Want."

His reticence only seemed to encourage her further; she sank back in her chair - _his_ chair - and laced her fingers together. "Making new friends? I saw that cousin of yours is still with her girlfriend - such a cute couple they make. What a shame it would be should tragedy befall them."

The threat snapped what was left of his restraints. He barrelled to his face, waving his finger in her face wildly. "You leave them al-"

"And I've heard you started hanging around with the youngest Archeron sister as well," she went on smoothly, ignoring his fury completely. He felt like a bucket of icy water had been dumped over him at the reference to Feyre. Did Amarantha know she had been the one to administer the tattoo? Was she threatening to go after her, too?

"Feyre has nothing to do with this," he snapped.

"That's where you're wrong, Rhysand, darling," Amarantha cooed, finally sitting up straight and engaging him full on. "Feyre Archeron, nineteen years old, the youngest of three witch sisters, all of whom blessed with considerable magic, specialising herself in curses and hexes and charms but also participating in some more-" At this, her eyes flicked to his collar bone - to the tattoo sitting there, "- _creative_ pursuits, has _everything_ to do with this situation."

He swallowed.

"As do her sisters - I'll wager they're tied up in it somehow as well."

"How."

"Oh, Rhysand," she tutted. "You shame me. The oldest, most gifted bloodline of witches in Velaris? Been in that manor since before witchcraft was legal?" She sat forward, nails digging into the arm rests, until their faces were inches apart. He leaned back nervously. "They are the most powerful allies one could hope to get in this beautiful city, and you and Azriel seem poised to do just that."

"I don't know what you're talking about-"

"Tell Azriel from me that donkey ears really suit him." She smiled, then the expression dropped. That in itself sent his pulse racing a mile a minute. "But on a more serious note, I'll tell you what I came for."

Begrudgingly, Rhys leaned in. If he listened to her demands and _then_ kicked her out, he might have a better understanding of the situation as a whole. "What was it." His voice invited no teasing or double cross.

"As I understand it," the woman said slowly, languidly, stretching out like a cat, "the late Archeron matriarch was especially gifted in charms - even more so than her youngest daughter is today. Feyre is more suited to duelling - hexes and whatnot - but Malorie Archeron, oh, she was a charmer indeed, in every sense of the word. As quick of wit as she was of magic, and people knew her as being able to produce the most beautiful creations."

Amarantha's voice was almost wistful as she said, "Wooden birds that really flew, glass clocks that told you when the sun would set, hourglasses that ran backwards. And," at this part Rhys reluctantly leaned in, intrigued, "she was especially good at harvesting the priceless phenomenon known as 'lightning in a bottle'."

"Lightning in a bottle?" He scoffed. "That's a phrase. An idiom. It's impossible to catch-"

"Without magic, it is." There was no humour in her voice now. "With magic, lightning in a bottle becomes a lethal weapon, containing more energy than a hundred power stations, and held in nothing more fancy or conspicuous than a glass bottle."

She paused, and added, "As I understand it the nature of the spell needed means only glass can contain the lightning, making it a very fragile and dangerous thing to carry around, but I'm sure the sisters have contingencies in place to protect themselves should such a thing ever happen. So what you're looking for won't be in an ordinary plastic milk bottle, but it'll have to be in glass ones. I imagine it would be quite a sight, seeing the blue and white electricity being containing by something so delicate."

"Excuse me?" Rhys was vaguely bewildered, with a mounting sense of dread. "I won't be _looking_ for _anything_."

She fixed him with her most merciful stare then. Gone were the pleasantries, the dancing around the topic. This was what she wanted; this was what she had come for. She wouldn't leave without it.

"Oh, but you will." Her voice went hard. "You will use your connection to Feyre Archeron to infiltrate the Archeron Manor and find where they are storing their supplies of it. And then you will bring at least one supply to me.

"Really," she added, playing with her ring. Rhys averted his eyes, pulse cantering, feeling slightly sick. "There's no need to look so hateful. If you want someone to blame, blame your beloved Lyra. If she hadn't been such an adamant ghost, if she hadn't refused to allow even the highest concentrations of electricity we could muster to dispel her, then I wouldn't have had to return to Velaris and resort to such extreme measures. But alas, she did, and so I must. No one can withstand a direct assault of lightning in a bottle. _No one_."

 _Not even you_ , Rhys realised. She wasn't saying it, but it was true. She must be desperate indeed if she was resorting to allowing him to know that he had the weapon needed to defeat her in his grasp.

The typical euphoria he should feel at that realisation didn't come. After all, a desperate enemy was an all the more dangerous one.

"And if you fail to acquire the lightning, well. . ." She let the sentence trail off like she savoured the exquisite taste of the word. "Morrigan and Andromache are on holiday in Scythia, aren't they? A lovely country, I'll admit, but there are so many dangers there. It would be a shame if they got hurt." Tilting her head to him in a mocking salute, she finished, "I'll see myself out. Good day, Rhysand."

Rhys breathe again when she had long left the building, but the ultimatum hanging over his head made it difficult. It felt like an anvil hanging over his head, about to drop. It felt like a noose ready to tighten.


	6. Donkey in the Library

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azriel goes looking for answers on how to reverse the hex sooner, but ends up finding answers of a different kind. At least, he would have if he'd known how to interpret them.

The Library of Velaris was located in the sector of the city which _did_ have an official name no one bothered to remember, but was largely called the "Day Court" by the locals, due to its slightly raised position at the top of the central hill of Velaris, where sunlight would strike the streets no matter the hour. It was a tall building, taller still if you counted the massive bronze spire that protruded from the top (it acted as a sundial, if the librarian was to be believed), and was built of the same pinkish-grey stone that most of the houses were made of in that area.

Most people attended because they had some latent studying to do, or just to get lost in piles and piles of history.

Azriel, on the other hand, was looking for a solution to his little problem.

Because apparently, according to the Archerons, he couldn't just use the internet. _It's full of mumbo-jumbo_ , they said. _It's what invalidates witchcraft as so much myth and nonsense,_ they said. _Looking in the library will be much more useful_ , they said.

Feyre _had_ had a particularly mischievous look in her eye as she said that, but his suspicions hadn't been raised to the point of him accusing her of pulling his leg and sending him on a wild goose chase.

Yet.

So he slipped in a side door, pointedly ignoring the ostentatiously carved main entrance, and made to sidle past the information desk without being noticed. Not being noticed was what he was good at, anyway - _not that you were particularly brilliant at it in Elain's garden, but sure, that was the hex's fault -_ hoping he'd pass without being approached.

No such luck.

"Azriel!" Helion Spell-Cleaver, one of the student librarians, popped up from behind the desk with alarming decisiveness, and levelled a grin with all the power of a thousand burning suns at him. "You must have gotten yourself into a bit of a bind."

Azriel's hand immediately went to his wrist, where the chain of glass beads Feyre had given him remained unbroken. He forced himself to relax; no one could see that he was technically part donkey.

And, well, Helion was technically a wizard, and maybe Feyre had said something about the charm not working on fellow witches and wizards? He resisted the urge to fidget where he stood, and instead said, most eloquently, "Excuse me?"

"Well, you wouldn't be here if you hadn't, would you?" Helion grinned, and Azriel relaxed minutely. "I thought you'd never come back! What finally drove you to return, oh know-it-all?" Helion reached over the desk and flicked at Azriel's left ear, frowning when the shadow snaking there disappeared just before he touched it. "One of these days I'll understand how you do that. . ." he muttered.

Then he brightened again. "Need any help? How're Rhys, Cassian and Mor?"

"They're fine. . ."Azriel said vaguely, and Helion's expression was so genuinely eager-to-please that he capitulated. It wasn't like he knew the library well, after all. . . "And actually, you can help me. I don't suppose you know where the books on witchcraft or spells are? More specifically, hexes and counter-curses?" He scratched the back of his head.

"Counter curses. . ." Helion trailed off, "Why would you want-" He narrowed his eyes at Azriel - or, rather, his wrist, where he noticed a touch too late that his sleeve had shifted down to reveal the bracelet. "Is that a charm?" Helion studied it closer. "By the Cauldron, it is. And a very well-made one at that. But why would you-" He looked back up at Azriel.

His eyes widened.

He let out a massive guffaw.

"Pick a fight with Feyre Archeron, did you?"

The man was faintly surprised. "You know her?"

"We're both witches and wizards. Of course we know each other. Her sister's stealing my market for prophecies and fortunes." He paused, then added, "Though that's probably because she actually gets them right when she does them."

He laughed at his own joke, then said, "But yeah, I know Feyre. I pissed her off once when we were going to that magic summer camp on top of Astra Alpha aged fifteen, and she hit me with that very hex. You're lucky she took pity on you and gave you the bracelet; I had to wander around with donkey ears for the rest of the holiday."

"So you don't know the counter-curse?" Azriel asked, slightly dejectedly. Helion shook his head.

"Sorry, Az, but no. Although I'm sure there's _some_ sort of information on it in here, if Feyre's being tight-lipped about it. This used to be the centre of all witchcraft and wizardry in the world, did you know? The most epic wizards of all time were here - my own ancestor, the Spell-Cleaver, included. I think Feyre's descended from one as well - the Cursebreaker." His frown furrowed his brows as he tried to remember, then he dismissed it. "Oh well. Do you mind if I have a quick look at that bracelet of yours?"

Azriel cast a glance around the atrium, saw no one there, and hesitantly agreed. "Sure." He slipped it off his wrist. He felt no obvious change as he did, but he was sure anyone watching would suddenly see a sad attempt at an early All Hallow's Eve costume materialise out of thin air.

He passed the beads over to Helion, who took it with almost exaggerated care.

"Wow," the wizard said at a first glance. " _Wow_ ," he said again, his eyebrows shooting up. Then he gave it back, with no explanations offered.

Azriel, curious despite himself, took it. "What is it?"

Helion met his glance head on, took a breath, then let it out. Then he said, "It's made of starglass. I know, I know - it's a really pretentious name - but I didn't name it! It's essentially normal glass, with a few extra ingredients mixed in with it, which is what gives it those threads of what looks like dye suspended in the beads. It's capable of holding _really_ large amounts of magic at any one time - the bottles that some people use to catch lightning are made out of it. Take care of that; it's worth its weight in gold."

"Feyre only lent it to me," Azriel responded. "I'm expected to look after it and return it anyway."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," came a bright voice. Azriel practically whirled round in his haste to see who'd come in; it was Elain, her hair braided across the crown of her head like a headband, a brown satchel hanging off one arm, already full to bursting with books. "I'm sure Feyre wouldn't mind if you keep it; we've got plenty at home."

If it weren't for a stray shadow used to monitoring every situation, Azriel would have missed the subtle tightening of her throat that, despite her lack of change in expression, betrayed that she hadn't meant to let those precise words slip.

"I'm not sure that's the wisest thing to say in a public place, Elain," Helion said, not without some amusement.

Elain grinned back at him. "I think you know from personal experience what happens to people who try to steal from us, Helion - no matter how friendly they are."

The librarian conceded the point with a good-natured grimace.

"So, what do you need help with? Herbology? Botany? Seer-ology?" He frowned. "Is that a thing?"

"It's called Divination," she informed him, mock tartly, then turned to Azriel. "And, actually, I dropped in because Rhys mentioned to Feyre who mentioned to me that you'd be in here this afternoon, and since I've had _personal_ experience navigating this nightmare of an organised library, I can safely say that you'll need all the help you can get."

"Rude, Elain." Helion didn't look in the least bit offended. "I do my best."

Elain leaned across the desk to pat his cheek affectionately. "Hate to break it to you, Helion, but I'm afraid your best efforts may not be enough to overturn centuries of chaotic organisation by non-witches who had no idea what was in the books."

"True. Will you need my help?"

Azriel found his voice then. "No, we'll be fine. I'm sure you're needed elsewhere."

Helion smirked at him - it looked so much like Rhys for a moment that Azriel was unnerved for a moment, and wondered why he was blushing. "I certainly am. Have fun, you two." He waved them off with a twinkling grin.

They walked between the towering shelves of books for what felt like an age, but was realistically only a few minutes, before someone broke the silence. Azriel watched with shock as he saw the elaborate, lovingly made shelves gave way to simply sky-high piles of paper and leather covers. Some of the documents thrown into the mess were even scrolls that looked like they might collapse the moment they saw daylight.

"Right. I see what you mean." Azriel bit his lip. "I don't suppose your rumoured powers as a Seer can help us find the books we need?"

"Hmmm." Elain tapped her chin. "They do, actually."

"What?" Something was wrong, he knew it, but his blatant hope that he wouldn't have to spend hours on end searching through paper pages with _donkey hooves_ censored his naturally cynicism. "What do they tell you?"

Elain gazed up at the mile-high stacks with a extreme resignation. "That this is going to take _ages_."


	7. Ghost of a Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feyre has a run in with a dead person, and it brings up memories she would rather stayed buried.

The streets were nearly deserted in a desolate way Velaris streets rarely were when Feyre made her way towards her early morning shift in the café. And perhaps it was because of that lack of people that she let her guard drop completely, in a way that she almost never did in crowds - there were too many pickpockets, even in affluent Velaris, and too much for her to lose to one.

Instead, with no one around, even if a pickpocket _did_ decide to target her, she would hear them coming a mile off. She wouldn't be caught by surprise by anyone.

Anyone _living_ , she later corrected herself, but at the time there was no way of knowing that, was there?

So as it was, Feyre was allowing herself to walk at a leisurely stroll for once in her life, reasonably confident (as confident as she'd be about _anything_ ) that she wouldn't be late. Her shift didn't start for another forty minutes after all, and she could make the distance in ten if she hurried.

She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she wandered along, completely oblivious the outside world.

And that was when the girl's voice said, "Are you Feyre Archeron?"

She whirled around, hands automatically flying to her wand, numerous curses and hexes cramming together on her tongue.

Only to blink in confusion.

Because the girl in front of her looked eerily familiar, straight from the raven hair that fell in loose waves, to the shape of the nose and the curve of the mouth. She wore a pale dress with crimson floral embroidery snaking it's way over the sides, and her feet were bare. Overall, the dress looked far too small for her.

Most disconcerting, however, was the fact she was transparent.

And _glowing_.

Immediately, charms and chants and runes to banish ghosts started running through her head, painstakingly drilled in there by Nesta, but they slipped out just as quickly. Was it a circle of salt or a circle of sugar that kept malicious magic away?

"I'll take that as a yes," the girl - woman? She looked maybe a few years younger than Feyre, but Feyre was barely an adult as it was - said quietly, glancing at the wand clutched between white knuckles. "I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to talk to you." She cleared her throat briefly - and wasn't that an odd idea, that ghosts got things caught in their throat, and wasn't that an inane thought she really didn't need to speculate on right now? - before continuing. "I'm Lyra Night."

_Night?_

"I don't suppose you know someone called Rhysand?" Feyre asked carefully, her heart beginning to race. First he gets himself into a life threatening situation, then a ghost who looks and sounds like she's related to him turns up? What the fuck had he gotten himself into?

Lyra smiled sadly. "He was my older brother before I died."

_Before I died_.

Feyre wanted to bark a bitter laugh. Weren't those words just a sweet sense of déjà vu?

"Okay," she began slowly, rather than continue to dwell on that delightful memory. "If you're dead, why are you here, talking to me, at an hour most people consider ungodly? Why did you decide to become a ghost? I know it takes a lot of willpower, combined with unfinished business and a genuine task you're required to do, so don't give me any bullshit about 'I missed my family' or something."

Lyra raised an eyebrow. _Cauldron, she looks so much like Rhys when she does that_. "Had a lot of experience, have you?"

Feyre began to fidget. "I've had my fair share." A pause, then she added, annoyed, "And I asked you first. Ghosts don't get much time to loiter, generally, so don't you think we'd better get to talking about what you came here to talk about?"

The ghost just smiled. "I don't suppose you know anyone called Amarantha?"

Feyre tensed up immediately.

Invisible forces strafing the room, furniture flying, that awful, awful blood oozing out of her father's chest, her mother's pale face as she lay in bed gasping _I won't leave I won't go they need me they_ need _me_ -

Over the top of it all, a high-pitched cackling that had rung in her ears for days after the event.

_It's been four years_ , she told herself. _It's been four years. Amarantha left. It's alright_.

It had been her mantra since everything happened.

Tightly, she said aloud, "I've heard of her."

Lyra seemed unfazed. "Then you know why my sole task in the afterlife is to piss her off as much as possible."

"What?" Feyre couldn't help herself; she burst out laughing. "You're saying you gave up a cushy paradise world just to follow around a bitch like her and just be as annoying as possible? Not that she doesn't deserve it," she added hurriedly, "but. . . Why? What did she do to you?" She said the last part with a sudden sense of unease, a twinge of empathy.

Lyra raised her eyebrows again, and shifted her dress, where Feyre now noticed a large, dark stain clouded much of the left side of her torso. "She killed me," she said simply. "Four years ago, she killed me, and she killed my father, and she killed my mother. And now she goes and threatens my cousin and her girlfriend, and attempts to torture and kill my brother as well. She needs to be stopped."

"Your brother. . ." Rhys's terrified face sitting in her living room flashed in front of her vision. " _Amarantha_ was the one who activated the protection rune?" The full reality of that truth hit her a moment later, and she staggered back, placing a hand on the wall to steady herself. She glanced around the streets, checking there was still nobody around but them, and bit her lip. "Amarantha is _here_? In Velaris?"

Lyra nodded. "Yes. She came back."

"Why." It came out so flat and hard it was barely a question; Feyre's eyes were narrowed as she scrutinised the ghost. "How long have you been haunting her?"

Lyra's shoulders tensed. "You are. . . unsettlingly astute," she admitted. "I started haunting her when she was off making trouble somewhere else - Hybern, it was - and then she realised who I was, and. . ." She trailed off, fiddling with her hands. "She decided to hit at the people I'd known in life. The people who still lived in Velaris."

" _You_ brought her back here?" Feyre couldn't stand still; she was filled with the sudden, unconquerable urge to _move_. She needed to- needed to- Her hands flexed into fists and out again. It was hard to breathe; her chest was heavy and scorching with a molten rage. "How-"

"There isn't _time_ for this!" It appeared Lyra's patience was beginning to fray as well. The girl darted forwards to grab Feyre's wrists before she could flail them anymore, but it seemed like she'd forgotten she wasn't corporeal anymore; she just punched right through the hands. The witch hissed in discomfort; it felt like she'd dunked them into a gust of winter wind.

" _Stop!_ " Lyra tried again. "I still haven't said what I came here to say!"

"Then get on with it," Feyre snapped, but the sentence lost its heat halfway through. That flare of rage had dissipated, leaving only a growing fear, a bone-deep unease, and an overwhelming feeling of _she would have done it too_. It was exhausting.

Lyra took a deep breath. "Amarantha has tried every method within her disposal to get rid of me," she rapped out at lightning speed. "And now she's come back here to threaten my family. But she wants me gone _permanently_ , not just subdued. So she's here looking for something else."

Feyre knew where this was going - she didn't know where this was going - she didn't _want_ to know where this was going - _but it makes so much sense_ -

"She can't find a single charge anywhere powerful enough to dispel me. But she's still looking. And we both know that _nothing_ can withstand a full blast from lightning in a bottle."

This was going where she thought it was going.

Lyra leaned in closer, her words coming faster, her voice more urgent. " _Do not_ sell _any_ of the lightning you caught in that storm. If you do, she will get ahold of it, and she will use it. It is safe, in your manor with all its wards and protections, but there are few places in Velaris as secure. And if Amarantha gets rid of me, she'll be able to resume normal operations."

"And more people will suffer," Feyre finished weakly. "Is that really worth me endangering my family and friends by getting involved?"

"You're already involved, Feyre," Lyra said. It was the first time she'd called her by her first name. "You gave Rhys that tattoo; your life is forfeit if he uses it one too many times. Your friend was already almost killed by it. And direct - or, perhaps, _current_ \- involvement notwithstanding, you have. . . personal. . . ties, to this situation." Her gaze was sad, but steely. "You're in it up to your neck, whether you like it or not."

"I know."

"You can't let her get ahold of it."

"I know."

"If she does-"

"I _know_." Tears were streaming down her face - when had that happened? She didn't remember crying. "I know firsthand what she's capable of."

Lyra's face softened. "That you do."

She began to turn away, to dissolve into the morning light, but she paused briefly and glanced over her shoulder. "Thank you," she said, and then her face was a memory of sunbeams and shadows.

Feyre watched the space where she had been for a few moments before she slumped against the wall, like the only thing keeping her upright was all the tension running through her. Now it bled out, and she sagged to the ground, her knees folding. All her breath rushed out of her at once.

Amarantha was back.

Fuck this shit.

And the lightning in the bottles. . . Distantly, Feyre remembered the night they'd gathered it: Elain jumping in puddles, Nesta trying to be harsh, but ultimately failing. The inescapable hope that had permeated the air; lightning in a bottle was very rare, and very valuable. With the amount they'd gathered, all of their monetary concerns might just disappear.

But if going without the money they so desperately needed was necessary. . . She'd find a way to survive it. They would not be enablers to Amarantha's reign of terror. For her mother, for her father, for everyone who'd suffered and died the last time she was in Velaris, Feyre refused.

The only problem was how to keep themselves going in the meantime.

* * *

The noonday sun was high in the sky, and the pavements were crammed. Nesta's hair tickled her nose again as she scurried across the busy street. If she hurried, she might still be able to reach the café in time before her lunch break ended - she had forty five minutes left-

She checked her watch, and tried not to huff at the throngs of people impeding her path. _Make that forty. . ._

She would be even more worried about being late if she'd been meeting Elain at the café, as they'd originally planned, but her sister had cancelled last minute, apparently having something absolutely vital to do in the library instead. Nesta wondered at that, suspicious, but hadn't pressed.

So instead she considered it now. As far as she knew, Elain had never taken her homework to the library before, never needing to or wanting to. She'd been before, of course - they all had - but not frequently; the witchcraft documents stored there were too disorganised and hard to find to be of any help. What had happened now that made her sister desperate enough to consult them?

Perhaps it was an invasion of privacy to speculate, but Nesta worried. She was so caught up with navigating this puzzle, that she was taken completely by surprise when someone grabbed her round the torso, and a heavy blow struck her head.

She didn't have time to scream before darkness descended.


	8. Lethal Beauty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhys loses his second life. To be honest, he was kind of asking for it.

Rhys was fairly certain Feyre was regretting the decision to invite him round to the manor to help each other with the homework after the day ended.

"Technically the Morning Star's a planet," he pointed out, not without some amusement. "Are you studying astronomy or astrology here?"

Feyre didn't even look up from her work books. He didn't blame her. This was the twenty seventh distantly-related-but-ultimately-useless fact and the thirteenth annoying question he'd pulled out of the blue in the last half hour. " _Technically_ , I'm studying astrophysics. We both are, idiot. I'm also studying Fine Arts and Witchcraft, which, before you ask, _does_ include astrology."

"You're getting a PhD in Astrophysics, Witchcraft and Fine Arts?" She raised her eyebrows, daring him to comment. "Seems a bit. . . random."

She shrugged. "Since the Council of Velaris abolished tuition fees, yes. We can afford it." _Barely_ , he thought he heard in his head. _But thank the Cauldron for it anyway_.

He jerked back from where he'd been studying a map of the night sky. He hadn't heard a voice in his head like that since- "Did you say that out loud?"

She gave him what he could only describe as A Look. "Yes. That is how one communicates, isn't it?"

"Not the part about tuition fees," he corrected hastily. "I mean the last part - where you said 'barely' and thanked the Cauldron for it."

Her face drained of colour. "You _heard_ that?" she demanded. " _How_? I wasn't projecting - not intentionally, at least." _I need to practice shielding again_.

"Yes you do," he snapped, "because I can hear every word you're thinking to yourself!"

A moment of silence passed.

". . .daemati?"

Rhys sighed. "Yes. I haven't used it in ages, though. Not since-" He cut himself off hastily, though the shadow that flickered across her face suggested she knew exactly what he was about to say. _Which is impossible, because you've never_ told her _anything of the sort-_ He gave her mind a clumsy, out of practice tap to try to discern her thoughts, but she'd claimed control of her shielding again, and he only got a thinly veiled glower in return for his efforts at being subtle.

"I'm sorry, then," she said, with forced lightness. "If you have the ability, and this is the first you've heard from me, then it must have been a long and exhausting day to get me to drop my shields like that. It won't happen again, I promise."

"It's alright," he reassured her. "I haven't used my abilities in years as it is." _Funny how I should start to use them again now, when things are coming full circle_. "It's nice to get the chance to practice." She didn't say anything in reply, and he hovered awkwardly amongst the silence for a moment, before asking, tentatively, "How did you gain the ability? I was under the impression it wasn't a recognised witchcraft."

"It's not." She finally looked up from her book, then, to meet his gaze. "But an ancestor of mine was an old witch - she's more legend than truth, nowadays, to be honest. Her first name's lost to time, but we call her the Cursebreaker. She had, on top of learned spells and wisdoms, a natural affinity for the seven bases magic is made up of: Fire, water, air, light, darkness, healing, and shapeshifting. Her descendants usually have smatterings of these abilities, occasionally. And the daemati gift falls under the gift of darkness." She shrugged. "It's just something I've learned to dabble in from time to time."

He narrowed his eyes at her, leaned forward and then directly into her mind: _Can you hear me, then?_

Feyre straightened in shock, then flicked her eyes up to meet his. Despite the surprise, a grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. _It's so strange talking like this. I haven't done it in years_.

_When did you do it before?_

_With my mother_ , she admitted, a flicker of sorrow drifting across the bond they were building between their minds. _Neither Nesta nor Elain can communicate like this; they can hear me, but I can't hear them. My mother could - though being a daemati was never her strong suit. I'm only able to communicate like this because I went through a brief phase when I was about nine where the very idea of talking directly into someone's head fascinated me._ He felt her float back into herself for a moment to reminisce, then she asked, _Who taught you?_

He debated asking her to drop the subject - he could see in her face that she'd very much felt the stab that went through him when he thought about it, and that she'd be all to happy to comply - but. . . _My father did. He was a daemati, and so was my sister. Sometimes we had massive debates just in our heads at the dinner table, and my mother, being the saint of patience she was, only complained a little bit when she pointed out that no one had spoken to her in half an hour._

_Sounds fun._

_It was._

Feyre's eyes, which had been locked onto his, flicked back down to the books. _We should probably get back to work. . ._ At the poorly concealed disappointment that sentence provoked from him, she grinned and added, _Or I can try and see if my mother kept any records of how this sort of communication works._

"Sounds great," he accidentally said out loud, wincing when the words echoed in the near-silent room.

Feyre just rolled her eyes. "If they're anywhere," she mused, "they'll be in the cellar. Stay in here," jumping up, she gave him a stern glare, "and I'll go get them. Don't follow me."

She said it so simply, so easily, that for a moment Rhys saw nothing suspicious in the words. But then he began to wonder.

Why was she so adamant that he not follow her? What was she trying to hide?

The answer rose unbidden in the back of his mind. He shuddered.

_That's a phrase. An idiom. It's impossible to catch-_

_Without magic it is._

After how the afternoon had gone already, there was no denying that Feyre and her family were magical.

No. He shook his head - he couldn't believe he was even _thinking_ about this. The very _idea_ of stealing from Feyre, his _friend_ , was. . . preposterous. Outlandish. Deplorable, unforgivable, completely and utterly _absurd_.

And yet. . .

_Morrigan and Andromache are on holiday in Scythia, aren't they? A lovely country, I'll admit, but there are so many dangers there. It would be a shame if they got hurt._

His sister's ghost or not, after what happened last time, he _wouldn't_ lose Mor. Not when she was the only family he had left.

So. . . what did that leave? What could he do?

Steal from Feyre?

Report this to the authorities?

Kill Amarantha?

His breath caught in his throat at the last thought.

_Could_ he kill Amarantha?

He felt his heart begin to thunder. Yes. Yes he could, because she'd said so herself, _nothing_ could withstand a direct assault of lightning in a bottle, and surely if he explained to Feyre what he wanted to do, she would oblige, and if not he would _pay her for it_ , because Amarantha needed to be eliminated. She would surely understand that.

But how could he even get _close_ enough to Amarantha to electrocute her? Just because she'd been dealing with him in person so far didn't mean she would when they made the transaction - he had no guarantee that he would even get close enough to target her, and surely, without a way to direct the lightning, he would die too?

Not that he wouldn't willingly lay down his life to keep his loved ones safe, but. . . He didn't want to risk it on what might end up being a fool's errand.

"Rhys?" Feyre's voice called up the stairs, interrupting his frantic thoughts. She sounded vaguely out of breath. "I've got a bunch of books here on daemati and mind-reading in general. Not sure how much of it's bullshit or not, but. . . There are more downstairs, but let me just dump these first." She strolled into the living room with her arms full of volumes, and dumped them onto one of the sofas. She grimaced as she straightened up again, then glanced at Rhys. "You okay?"

He shook himself. "Fine," he said, maybe a little too quickly. She narrowed her eyes, and he racked his brain for an explanation- "I just thought I heard something outside," he lied smoothly. "I guess I'm still a little jumpy from the whole near-death experience." _Understatement of the century._

Maybe she heard the thought, maybe it was _her_ thought, but either way she frowned. "You think someone's out to get you?" It didn't seem like a question, but Rhys nodded anyway. "I guess that the wards wouldn't be affected if they were after _you_ , not anyone of Archeron blood, so. . ." She shrugged. "I'll go check it out. You stay here; I won't be a minute."

Then she was gone, ducking out the front door and letting it slam shut behind her. He was left in silence, his heartbeat the only sound.

She'd said she was going to head back downstairs. . . the cellar door would still be unlocked. . .

He sprang to action.

Rhys had never been deep into the Archeron Manor before - he'd pretty much only ever seen the living room, and that was it - but he guessed his way along the main corridor, until he reached a door that was still hanging ajar, showing the path to a stairwell dimly lit by a single lightbulb. He padded down the stairs, tongue swelling to constrict his throat, until he'd reached the cellar.

And then he reeled back in shock.

The air in the room was bone dry, no doubt some spell to preserve the books kept in there. The walls were lined with shelves. On his right were stacked an assortment of strange odds and ends - a rolled-up red rug, a wooden carving of a duck, a painting of the night sky, an ordinary broomstick he suspected could fly - and on his left were the books Feyre had been rooting through moments before. But in front of him. . .

He stepped forwards, until his nose was almost touching the glass.

_I imagine it would be quite a sight, seeing the blue and white energy being contained by something so delicate._

It was.

The dozens of glass bottles before him ranged in size from the length and width of his little finger to the length of his arm, fat enough to hold a beach ball. The glass was peculiar; it was an odd partially transparent grey, with threads of what looked like coloured ink twisting round and through it like crystallised tadpoles. Inside it, the lightning was actually more purple than blue, though it could've been classified as both; it writhed in its cage, casting rippling lights over the walls of the cellar, and spat white sparks that hissed when they collided with the insides of the bottle. The entire shelf seemed to hum with power.

Rhys's hands were trembling as he reached for a bottle. The glass was cool under his touch, but he could feel the thrumming, feel it pass through his skin and blood and bones and feel as his heartbeat adjusted to it, like a fundamental piece of nature that some inner instinct warned him to respect.

He lifted it from the shelf, before staggering back with a grunt. It was _heavy_.

Looking at it, his breath began to speed up. _This_ was what Feyre was coveting, _this_ was what Amarantha was after, and oh Cauldron oh Cauldron what had he gotten himself into-

Footsteps creaked above him; he yanked his head back to look up, up through the floors, up to where Feyre was re-entering the manor, up to where she went into the living room to find him gone, up to where her brows creased and she tentatively called out a "Rhys?" he could hear from even in the cellar, and oh Cauldron he was in _way_ over his head-

What happened next was inevitable, really; his hands were shaking too much. He dropped the bottle.

Time zipped past, like a cork freed from a bottle, and when he reminisced about this moment later, he would appreciate the lethal beauty of the scene as the small bottle shattered, the glass pieces scattering out from a central point like petals on a flower, the neon lightning forming vivid fronds.

But right now, his mind was preoccupied with the fact that _he'd dropped something_ and _he needed to catch it before he hit the ground_ so when it did so, he was already on his knees next to the centre, and was hit face-first with the rebound.

His cells melted.

That was all there was to it.

Searing heat barrelled towards him, painting his face with a pain so great he could hardly feel it.

What he _could_ feel, though, was the energy that danced across his veins, through his heart, blending with his own bioelectricity, and how _invigorating_ it was.

Later, he would stumble onto the paradoxical thought that on the edge of death, he'd never felt more alive.

The tingling was just starting to give way to agony when there was a pulsing at his collarbone, like a second heartbeat. He glanced down, almost in a daze, and wondered at the red, amber and green that glowed there-

There was a _pushing_ , like all his cells were suddenly swollen to the largest they could go, then a _throb_ that sent all remaining electricity shooting back out of his body, leaving him with his heart stuttering, lying on his back on the floor.

With a perfect view of how the repulsed lightning collided with the shelves of the other bottles. How the bottles ever so slightly began to tilt towards him.

He watched them fall, and couldn't even muster up a sense of fear.

Not until a voice hard with rage spat a word he'd never heard before, but one that sent all the bottles shooting back onto the shelf. Not until Feyre stood over him, lips pulled back in a snarl, and glowered at him.

"What the _fuck_ do you think you're _doing_?"


	9. Spring the Trap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two Archerons have to deal with intense negative emotions while they're in cellars.

It wasn't that Nesta Archeron disliked Cassian Illyria. It was that she hated him.

When they'd first met, Feyre had been physically restraining her from lunging at him and ripping his limbs off. (Okay maybe nothing that violent. But hitting him with a few hard curses, sure.)

Fourteen times (and yes, she was counting) she'd received a prank call from the same phone number. Twelve times of which had been on a date with Tomas. And it was true that they'd been drifting apart (shattering) for years now, but she knew (believed) that it was entirely Cassian's fault it had crashed and burned the way it did.

Because having her phone's ringtone interrupt some self-important monologue on Tomas's part may have been tolerable at first, but eventually it had led to tense discussions (arguments) and a gaping chasm to open up (widen) between them. Tomas wanted her to turn her phone off at their dates, or even leave it at home altogether, and she'd refused.

Because she was well aware of the disdain some witches still faced for their "unnatural" powers; though she herself nor anyone she knew had never been targeted for it, she'd grown up on the horror stories of what it used to be like, with her mother passing on tales generations old of the pyres and the flames, of the intricacies of the protection wards on the manor, of the fear that had choked her people until they were asphyxiated.

Her ancestors had not had the wonders of modern technology to contact each other, to call for help. She did.

She'd be damned if she gave it up, annoying prank caller or no.

And thus their arguments (fights) escalated, their fundamental _disagreements_ on what was important and what wasn't, the conflict only dragging to light other differences that they'd been able to gloss over before. Differences that didn't matter when you were young and passionate and intoxicated with life, but were put into stark relief when you were amidst a battle of ideals.

When the arguments had reached a breaking point, Tomas had changed (shown his true colours). He'd broken all those promises to her from so long ago, and- and-

She refused to speak of it. She'd never even told her sisters that they were at an end; she _knew_ Elain and Feyre didn't like him, knew they thought he was too domineering, too possessive, too _dangerous_ \- she didn't want to deal with their _I-told-you-so_ looks on top of everything else.

And maybe she just wanted to grieve for the dreams she had, the dreams he'd killed like shooting down birds one by one. To grieve for all the time wasted. All the time _lost_.

She and Tomas had always been destined to clash, to burn, like swords in the blacksmith's forge. But she needed someone to blame for her pain, and Cassian Illyria was the perfect scapegoat: He'd been the one who'd triggered the arguments in the first place, no?

(No.)

So needless to say, hating his guts and all, Nesta wasn't angry when she woke up in a cellar to see his gloating face sitting opposite, watching her.

Oh no. She was _apoplectic_.

(Nesta had never done in-between emotions, never gentle - though never forceful either. Gentle was Elain's dominion: summer waves, and summer hazes, and spring leaves curling in the soft sunlight. Forceful was Feyre's world, of focused intent and unbreakable will, of an arrow so perfectly shot that it would never not reach its target. But Nesta was an explosion, spilling her most destructive emotions left right and centre, probably wasting their potency but never - _never ever ever_ \- letting them control her. She was bigger than that. Better than that.)

(Unlike Tomas.)

"And the Ice Princess finally awakens from her slumber," that _fucking prick_ Cassian drawled. The basement was lit dimly by a single lantern in the corner, and it cast thick shadows that disguised that lightness of his hazel eyes, the precise shape of his mouth, the exact curl of his hair. But she'd spent so much time glaring at him, so much time _hating_ him, that she could identify him in far more challenging situations than the dark. He shifted, letting out a soft groan. She moved her neck; she was uncomfortable sitting against the hard wall like this herself. "I thought I was going to have to kiss you to get you cognizant again."

"You wouldn't dare," she hissed, that molten fury in her leaping like a spitting volcano, or a flapping crimson banner, or roaring beast. " _You wouldn't dare_."

He just grinned, one eyebrow raised. And how she _hated_ that expression.

Had hated it, in fact, since she'd first seen him in person, in the last stages of hers and Tomas's relationship, when the knowledge that it was all falling apart and the helplessness she felt because of it and the overwhelming desire to _stop being helpless_ had overtaken her. She'd taken Feyre with her to track down the prank caller, with every intention of _making him sorry_.

Instead, he'd stood at the door and laughed, while Nesta had raved and screamed, until her sister's friend Rhysand had yanked Cassian back inside and Feyre had yanked her back to the car. She hadn't asked any questions; she'd been too self-centred to. (Too caught up in her own worries to.)

(And maybe that was why she'd asked Feyre to accompany her. Because she didn't want to explain the depths of hatred she felt, nor where this hatred had sprung from, and she'd known Feyre wouldn't ask questions. But Elain would have. Elain would have.)

Cassian shrugged now, and she clenched her fists - only to hiss when she looked down in shock. Her hands were shackled in binders. As were Cassian's, she realised as she looked up.

It was then that perhaps the most important question hit her: _Where were they!?_

"Where are we." It was a demand more than it was a question, and it drained the humour from Cassian's face.

"I don't know," he admitted, though there was more anger than reluctance in his voice. They were of the same in that aspect (and many others, was what she wouldn't admit) then. "I _don't know_." He clenched his fist. Even in the dim light, she could see the shadows cast by the tendons that stuck out. "What do you remember?"

She studied him. She could be stubborn, snap at him, but. . . This was a serious situation. Fighting would get them nowhere.

"I was just walking to lunch, then. . ." She shook her head; it still ached and rang. "Darkness."

"Lunch?" he asked. She nodded curtly, and he let out a peculiarly violent huff, tilting his head back against the wall. Belatedly, Nesta realised they were _not_ chained to the wall in any way - Cassian must have purposefully sat as far away from her in the cellar as possible. "Well, the last I remember was finishing my afternoon shift, so you've been here for a few hours longer than me."

Nesta grudgingly accepted this, because she refused to accept the alternative: that she'd been here for more than a day.

It didn't bear thinking about.

"Well then," she asked, her voice forcibly light. "How are we going to get out of here? Do you even know who kidnapped us?"

He gave her a look that she loathed, one that suggested she was a monumental idiot. She'd show him- "Well, duh. Amarantha."

Nesta froze. " _Amarantha?_ " Her voice was a whisper.

No.

No no no!

Tightly, she said, "That's _impossible_." When he looked liable to argue, she insisted, "Amarantha is _gone_. Off the terrorise some other corner of the world."

Screams and blood and screams and more blood and _Mama Papa don't leave us don't leave_ me _I can't look after them on my own_ -

She took a sharp breath. "It's _impossible_."

"Well, she's back," Cassian said bluntly. She'd never hated him more than she did in that moment, she thought. "And apparently her security's worsened since she was last here."

" _What are you-_ "

"If you're going to be so snappish with me, maybe I shouldn't have waited until you woke up to escape," he snapped. His eyes narrowed. "Because I can see one way out of here, and that's _that_ trapdoor in the ceiling." He nodded at the corner, where there were a bunch of crates piled up, presumably so people could climb in and out. "It's locked, of course, but _you_ have a hairpin, and I have the ability to pick locks. And these binders are made of flimsy plastic - I could break them easily if I tried."

Nesta's heart, which had begun to hammer, stopped dead in her chest. "Amarantha _wants_ us to escape."

Cassian cocked an eyebrow. He looked almost offended. "Excuse me?"

She was certain of it. Irreparably certain. She still had her wand on underneath her clothes, was bound by poor materials, and still had her sharp hairpin keeping her hair out of her face. Amarantha had never shown such courtesies as to let her keep them before; Nesta had little reason to believe she would do so again.

"She _wants us to escape_ ," she reiterated, punctuating her sentence with a glare, as if to say yes, she was serious. "I don't know why, but Amarantha has purposefully given us the opportunity to escape. I have a hairpin, you can break the binders, we can pick the lock. And can you hear anyone walking about above us? We're alone in the building. I still have my fucking wand, for Cauldron's sake. She's never been so shoddy." She shoved herself off the wall and into a standing position. She staggered for a moment, her legs numb, then regained her balance. "This is a trap of some sort."

Cassian's face was bright with understanding. He nodded grimly. "Well then, I don't see much choice. What do we do next?"

She considered all of their meagre options, and knew ultimately that there was only one. "We spring the trap."

* * *

Feyre's glare was perhaps the most terrifying thing he'd ever seen, and not least because he knew that something between them was gone.

" _Thief_." She spat the word.

Oh, yes, something between them was irreparably, irrevocably, irreversibly _gone_. Trust shattered, friendship suspended, hope lost. He'd never get her to help him with this situation, never avenge his family, and now he'd never hear her voice in his head again, nor use that forgotten gift that had once been as vital as breathing to him.

But that didn't mean he'd take it lying down, figuratively or literally. He sat up, scowling. "I'm _not_ a thief." Cauldron, he sounded like a petulant child, like the worst liar on the planet, but if she would just listen-

"Then explain _this_." Her arm gesture encompassed the whole cellar, including the two of them. "What are you doing down here?"

"I wasn't going to steal anything, I- I was just curious." Her gaze softened somewhat at that, but her grip on her wand was still knuckle-whitening and that was _not_ something he wanted right now. "I was going to ask you."

"Ask. Me. _What_." There was whiplash to her voice, and he cringed away from it, and he opened his mouth to speak, but there were no words to be said, and there was a roaring inside and outside his head, and if she would just _listen_ -

" _Stop that!"_

Feyre sucked in a breath; her shoulders relaxed. The angry storm died down, the winds no longer whipping through anyone's hair, the cellar no longer feeling quite so full of violence. She resumed glaring at him. "Ask me what?"

Rhys took a shuddering breath. That she could create such a storm in her passion without even realising it, that much power contained in a slim, medium-height body. . .

He didn't answer her question. He couldn't, because answering her question would require time to make her understand, and he didn't _have_ that time, judging by the wand being waved in his face. But she _needed_ to understand, and she _needed to listen_ , so he said the only thing that would _make her_ listen.

"Amarantha is back in Velaris."

"I know."

His eyes blew wide at the admission, his heart stuttering, and if she knew that then did she know-?

"And I suppose you were trying to steal my lightning in a bottle to bring it to her?" He opened his mouth to protest - _no, no, never_ \- but she cut him off with a bitter laugh. "Oh no. My apologies. You were going to _ask_ me if I would sell you some lightning in a bottle. Well let me tell you this, Rhysand Night," she spat, jabbing him in the chest with her wand, "I will _never_ be an enabler to Amarantha's reign of terror. _Ever_."

He forced himself to take another deep breath. It was now or never. . .

". . .I wanted the lightning in a bottle to kill her."

Feyre froze. "What did you say?"

There was still a wand waving in his face, but she was listening now, so Rhys jumped on the chance. He made to stand, but Feyre twitched when he did, her grip on the wand tensing, so he decided to remain kneeling. "Amarantha asked me to get a hold of the lightning from you," he admitted quietly. "She threatened my cousin to do it. But I won't. I will never. And she said herself that no one could withstand a blast of lightning in a bottle." He shrugged. "Besides, wouldn't it be poetic if she was killed by the very thing she needed?"

Feyre's hand was shaking, he noticed. For the first time in a while, he dared to look away from the wand in his face and meet her gaze. She was crying silently, her cheeks gleaming. He wondered if she knew it.

Finally, Feyre said, voice hoarse, "Amarantha was the one who triggered the protection rune the first time."

It wasn't a question, but he answered anyway. He needed some truth to ground him. "Yes."

"Yes." She repeated the word like she was tasting how it felt in her mouth. A moment of silence passed, then, "Amarantha is really back."

He couldn't blame her for trying to desperately cling to denial. But it wouldn't help anyone. "Yes."

A spell seemed to break, then. Like some enchantment had been holding Feyre frozen in place, and that one word released her from it. Se staggered back, her wand lowering, her other hand flying to her face. Tears leaked out of her eyes indiscriminately now, and she sank to her knees, rocking back and forth like a little girl afraid of the dark.

"Feyre? Is that you down there?" It wasn't Rhys who said it; no, it was a female voice he didn't recognise. A dishevelled woman who looked to be a few years older than Feyre descended the stairs, and scowled when she saw him. Then her eyes moved to her sister - because this _was_ Nesta Archeron, he remembered her now - and she stilled. "Feyre?"

Feyre only wept harder. More people descended the stairs: Elain, Azriel and Cassian. Cassian looked just as dishevelled as Nesta, and Azriel and Elain looked legitimately concerned.

It was Rhys who stared at Cassian, who looked far worse for wear than when Rhys had last seen him, and it was Rhys who asked, "What happened?"

Cassian's face was grim. "Nesta and I were kidnapped by Amarantha, before she let us escape. We bumped into Elain and Azriel when they were on their little date wandering around Velaris." Elain blushed, pointedly  _not_ looking at her eldest sister, but Nesta didn't seem to have heard. She'd made a beeline for Feyre and stood with her hand on her sister's shoulder, murmuring comforting words in a language Rhys didn't recognise.

But even if Nesta wasn't listening, Feyre apparently was. And she had her priorities straight. "Amarantha kidnapped you?" she asked. Cassian nodded.

The way Feyre's face crumpled like an aluminium can made Rhys feel helpless in a way he hadn't since the night he'd lost everything. She let out an unbridled sob, before she shoved herself to her feet and tore up the stairs, out of the room. Distantly, they heard the front door slam.

"Where's she going?" Nesta asked, brows drawn tight in an expression of concern that didn't suit her at all. She and Elain exchanged a meaningful glance.

"You know where she's gone," the middle sister replied. Nesta's face hardened back into its natural set up, like lava flows re-solidifying into their layers.

"She shouldn't be going there alone. Not in the state she's in."

Elain shook her head. "She needs to. You know she does."

"No," Nesta said, voice clipped. "She doesn't." She made to run up the stairs herself. "I'm going after her."

"Wait." Nesta whirled round at the word, eyes blazing, but they softened somewhat when she realised what Azriel was holding out. "Give her this back. And tell her thank you." It was the bracelet of glass beads she'd given him.

Rhys watched to see if the glamour disappeared, but it didn't. He still looked like Azriel.

Elain noticed him staring. "We found a stronger glamour," she explained. "One that'll hide the features from even himself until the spell wears off." Rhys just nodded in acknowledgment.

Azriel pressed the bracelet into Nesta's hand. She looked at him for a long moment, then down at the trinket she held. Her fingers curled tightly around it.

Then she stormed out of the cellar on her sister's tail.


	10. Reminiscing Hurts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feyre decides to ignore some age-old advice in order to get some answers. She also remembers what happened with Amarantha before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter it kind of backstory-heavy, but not everything is revealed, so if there's anything you still don't understand then just say so in the reviews and I'll try to make sure it's answered in the next chapter, if it's not another big reveal I've got planned.

The mountain earth was hard beneath her feet as Feyre ran. The slopes of Alpha Astra were steep and rocky, but Feyre knew them. She'd worn the paths smooth running along them as a child, been battered and bruised through the many trips and falls she'd sustained, played hide and seek in every minute crack or crevice she could find. This was _her_ territory. She wasn't afraid of it.

_Amarantha's back Amarantha's back Amarantha's back oh please no Cauldron no not her not her again-_

The scar on her calf _burned_.

She shouldn't be here. She should be down at the manor with her family, working through a contingency plan to get the hell out of this city. She shouldn't be climbing a mountain in too-thin clothes, summer or not, the thin air making her shiver in earnest.

She should go home.

But Amarantha is back, and now it's not a matter of _should she_ but a matter of _will she_.

Rhys had spoken so- so _easily_ \- about killing Amarantha. Said it with arrogance in his voice, albeit mixed with desperation at the plight he'd been in. Said it like it had just occurred to him, a _you know, maybe we could do this_ that had sprung to mind. Like it wasn't the deepest desire of Feyre's tormented and healing soul that Amarantha was dead and gone and burning in Hell.

It had scared her, in the initial days after the nightmare, after the physical wounds had healed but the psychological ones were just beginning to fester. It had scared her how much she wanted to see her tormentor suffer for what she had done to her - to her _family_. She had been a sheltered teenager with the roof and rug ripped from over and under her, left to freefall into oblivion, and she had been so, so afraid.

She _was_ so, so afraid.

Her footsteps carried her where her thoughts could not, and when the fissure in the rock opened up, mere hundreds of metres below where the mountain split into its two peaks, she dived into it. The darkness swallowed her like the embrace of a well-worn dressing gown and she sighed in relief, her breath echoing. It was dark in here - dark, but she found her way.

After she'd stopped running for an instant, after she allowed the unmarred tranquillity of the tunnel to soothe her racing heart: that was when the thought bubbled again to the surface.

She shouldn't be here.

She shouldn't be here not only because she was needed down there, or because there was no mistake, but because in the wake of her mother's death and the return of her murderer she was forgetting - no, not forgetting, discarding, obliterating, _defiling_ \- her mother's most staunch advice: _Never walk the Ouroborous Path alone with a heavy heart._

And Feyre's heart had never felt heavier.

For a moment she froze, those whispered words from so long ago yanking at something in her chest like the stitches in a too-small piece of clothing.

Then she plunged farther into the tunnel.

She didn't need the green light from the pools to her left and right in order to see, but she was grateful for it anyway; muscle memory could only get you so far, and legends had been told about negligent fools who'd fallen in enchanted places such as this and been cursed in increasing imaginative ways forevermore.

The tunnel itself was uninspiring, if a haven for a child's imagination. It was a natural cavern that stretched through the centre of the mountain, right from one side to the other. In places it was about as wide as a tennis court, the stalactites on the ceiling at least three stories up; in others it was barely narrow enough for one large person to fit through, with twists and turns that dug uncomfortable into your spine and back if you didn't shimmy along sideways.

It had been the highlight of Feyre's youth.

The puddles and pools - filled with a rare, bioluminescent algae, Feyre's mother had said; she _assumed_ that was the truth - that littered the floor were unusual, and made it a fascinating place to walk, but that wasn't what made it so famous - or dangerous.

No, what did _that_ was the magic the place seemed to sing with. This place had been sacred to witches and wizards for generations, stood as a site of pilgrimage since long before witchcraft was legal, been the entire _reason_ that a city like Velaris - nestled only a few dozen miles away from it - had such a large magical population. When the witches had been forced to choose one area to ward and charm against unwelcome visitors, they had naturally chosen the site of one of their most precious curiosities.

The magic had never manifested itself in a definitive form - that was what had kept its origins obscure for countless centuries. But when one played in it, it was impossible to entirely ignore the whispers, or the darting shadows, or. . . tingles. . . one got.

Sometimes, when one was feeling particularly emotional, one would see full scale visions shimmering in the air.

Feyre knew all this, but she kept walking anyway, effortlessly shifting her weight to avoid the uneven terrain tipping her headfirst into a pool. She clenched and unclenched her fists as she walked; her breathing came quick and fast; everything she'd learned in the past hour replayed on a loop in her head.

She was shouting into that enchanted abyss: _Hey! I'm emotional! What are you gonna do about it?_

Never walk the Ouroborous Path alone with a heavy heart. You will not survive.

Well, fuck that, fuck magic, and fuck all the fucking rules. She'd survived this far; she _would not_ be killed by a _cave_.

She kept walking.

* * *

Nesta didn't know what Elain was thinking, insinuating Feyre would go down _that_ path. Especially now, of all times. Feyre had a sensible head on her shoulders; she knew when to quit.

There was no way Feyre would try to walk the Ouroborous Path today.

But she hurried her steps a little anyway.

* * *

The first vision that came was one she almost literally crashed into. She was walking at a fairly brisk pace until she was drawn up short by the reflection of the green light in the grey translucence of a stalagmite. She almost stepped aside to walk round it, but-

The stalagmite wasn't reflecting the cave behind her.

No: It was reflecting three little girls playing in a garden. It was the photograph on the mantelpiece at home, taken when Feyre had been three, Elain five, Nesta six. Feyre remembered the heat of the day, the cool swish of grass against her hands, and the vicious satisfaction she'd felt moments after the photo was taken, when she'd taken the bottle of paint she was pictured holding and squeezed it all over Nesta's pristine white sundress.

Her older sister had made a comment on the state of her overalls. It had been only fair.

When she examined the image closer, her eyes strayed to the vessel it was carried in. The stalagmite seemed to be lit from within by the same white light the images were woven of; it was like looking into a hollow glass cylinder, with tiny little dolls propped up inside it. Like an art exhibition.

She blinked suddenly, and the strange pull that had clamped her in place peering was relinquished. She may have been a tad hasty in getting away from the picturesque scene, her heartbeat loud in her ears.

She should have gone back.

But she hadn't.

So really, she was obligated to keep going.

* * *

When Nesta crested the first hill, her pulse was thundering. She'd had to give up on running it sometime back; without the well of desperation and shock Feyre was undoubtably drawing on, it was impossible to take the entire mountainside too quickly. But she stopped altogether when she faced the first split of the path.

The path to the left led to the mountain glade Nesta knew Feyre loved dearly. She went there to paint often, had gone there for solace after their parents' deaths - she would probably be there. _Certainly_ not have gone to the right, where the path Elain had mentioned was.

Nesta knew this. (Thought this.)

But for some reason, she found her feet taking the right hand path anyway.

* * *

The second vision wasn't just an image. It was moving.

It came up in much the same style as the first: A stalagmite lit from within, a monochrome reel of events displayed amidst the light. The events were repeated, but Feyre could see no minute jump where the run ended and the next began; it was like each motion led smoothly into the next in seemingly perpetual motion. This time it just showed a clip of her parents dancing - the memory itself was unfamiliar to Feyre, but she watched with hunger the change of her mother's face from peace to surprise to joy as her father took her hand and spun her in a pirouette.

She spun for eternity, that changing face never bearing any other expressions. Her father looked on with a sort of quiet adoration; Feyre tore her gaze away and clenched her fists, angry at the image, angry at what was lost, angry to feel hot tears cling to her cheekbones.

They were dead. They were dead they were dead they were dead-

She punched the stalagmite.

There was a _crack_ from her hand slapping stone, but her mother kept on spinning.

And Feyre kept on walking.

* * *

This path was chillier than the left hand one; it led round the mountainside, rather than through the relative shelter of the woods. Nesta scowled at the scenery below her, as though it were at fault for her discomfort, and pulled the coat she'd grabbed on the way out tighter around herself.

* * *

The third and fourth visions came at once, in quick succession.

The third was barely countable as one: She paused and blinked at a sudden flash of red in her peripheral vision, heart thundering - _I want you to do something for me, Malorie Archeron_ \- and it was in that moment of reflex that a stray wind blew through, despite the overall lack of breeze thus far.

Feyre shivered at the coldness it brought with it just as much as she did with the whisper it carried. _"You will find that move most unwise,_ Prince of Merchants _. I have my ways of letting my displeasure show."_

The hearthstones in front of the living room fireplace would forever bear the stench of blood and vomit from where Feyre had retched onto them after _that_ particular event, the fear from the moment still stabbing through her.

She jerked to the side, eyes squeezing shut for an instant. Then she opened them to look at the wall, and the floor fell away from her.

She felt like she was floating in mid air as she watched the dew-dampened wall glisten with that same white light, an image rippling across it. She caught her breath as the events played. It was a memory seen from her own young eyes now, of her father rooting through old newspapers in his study muttering, "Clythia, Clythia, Clythia," and freezing when he looked up to see Feyre standing in the doorway.

"Sweetheart," he said, trying for a grin. His face was pinched. "Why don't you run along and find your mother? Tell her-"

"Tell me what?" a voice she hadn't heard in so long said, and Feyre remembered this, remembered the weight of her mother's hand resting on her shoulder as she asked, "What's wrong?"

Her father bit his lip, glanced at her, then back at his wife. He didn't say anything.

Malorie Archeron sighed, and placed her other hand on Feyre's free shoulder. "I had a client today," she offered. Honesty for honesty. "A woman named Amarantha. She was offering a lot of money."

Her father paled further. "Do you know what she wants you to do?"

Malorie shook her head. "Not yet, no. Why?"

Her father's gaze landed on her. "Feyre, go to your room," he said softly. "Malorie, I need to talk to you. . ."

The scene cut off almost as swiftly as it'd started, leaving Feyre to blink as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

* * *

Nesta was still panting, exhausted. But then she got a gut urge to run.

Feyre - if she didn't run, she wouldn't reach Feyre in time.

She ran.

* * *

The fifth and final vision would be what killed her.

Feyre knew this. She kept walking anyway. None of her earlier bravado had survived the emotional turmoil, but she trekked onwards, despite no desire to see any more visions. But now she had an insatiable curiosity inside her, and she needed to know what this cave was trying to tell her before she died.

She needed to know who Clythia was.

She needed to know why Amarantha had been so desperate to get her mother's services all those years ago that when Malorie had refused she'd gone on a killing spree.

She needed to know why her mother had refused in the first place.

And so she kept walking, her eyes peeled for any white light in the vicinity. She found it maybe two dozen paces later, where the green light from one of the pools had the colour sucked out of it until it danced and sparkled like carbonated water. She knelt next to it, ignoring the rough rock under her knees, and gazed in.

She recoiled like whiplash.

But her eyes were still riveted to the water, so she leaned forward and watched as that awful day played out again in front of her - of her father in the middle of the street, a younger Feyre in her school uniform at his side. She remembered that though Amarantha had initially asked for her mother's help when Feyre was just eight, over the years she'd become more desperate for it and the Archerons had become more paranoid as the years passed, until Feyre had to be picked up directly from school every day.

That day, however, marked an end to the waiting game, and reminded them all what they'd been paranoid about in the first place.

Feyre watched how she chattered away - so many years younger, so much more naïve - how her father had listened with a smile on his face. Her heart ached as she watched him, knowing what was about to happen, knowing there was nothing she could do to stop it. Knowing she would have given anything to anyway.

Her father idly looked up to scan the street, then froze.

Because there, leaning against the building opposite, was Amarantha, her hair a splash of colour against the dirty brick wall.

He barely had time to look shocked at her appearance before the first gunshot was fired.

It hit her father in the chest, and blood bloomed against his white shirt - a rose against the snow. He gasped and doubled over. Feyre knew enough to glance at the tattoo on the inside of his right forearm - three concentric rings, each flashing red, amber and green. The tattoo her mother had put there.

There was a pulse as the bullet flew back out of his chest, the wound already beginning to heal.

He wasn't dying anymore, but he shoved his daughter away all the same. "Go," he said, fumbling in his pockets for the car key and pressing it into her hand. "Nesta should be here soon - give that to her, and get out of here."

She didn't move, the key gripped tightly in her hand. "But-"

"GO!" he shouted. "RUN, FEYRE! "

Feyre ran.

She zigzagged across the street, a more difficult target in case the sharpshooter decided to fire at _her_ next. At the time she hadn't been privy to looking back and seeing as the two other shots hit her father; she'd just flinched at the sound and kept running.

But now, with an outsider's perspective, she could see the pain in his face. The way he snarled at Amarantha. The terror as he watched her make her escape.

And she could watch as the fourth shot rang out, all the lives spent. She saw the tattoo struggling to fight back against it, saw it winning. . . and then another shot rang out, and it was too much. He collapsed to his knees, dead.

She shut her eyes tight, praying for the vision to end.

It didn't.

Instead, she heard another shot, and a scream - her _own_ scream - as it collided with her younger self's leg. Teenage Feyre collapsed, sobbing, absolutely unwilling to look behind her and behold her father's corpse.

There was the slow sound of sauntering footsteps, and Amarantha approached the felled girl. She was _smiling_. Pulling a gun from behind her back, she stood directly in Feyre's line of sight, pointing the firearm at her.

"I wouldn't advise moving, Miss Archeron." Teenage Feyre bared her teeth, but followed the advice, muscles pulled taught at the end of the barrel.

Amarantha sighed, ostensibly from disappointment, and then she swung the gun. The butt collided with Feyre's temple; she sprawled out onto the floor, unconscious.

This was where Feyre's memory of the event ended. But it wasn't where the vision ended.

The woman surveyed her dispassionately for a moment longer before raising the gun again. Feyre's eyes widened as she watched.

Then-

 _"Don't you touch her!"_ screamed a voice. Feyre whirled to see a younger Nesta sprinting down the street, brandishing her wand at Amarantha. _"Leave my sister alone."_

"Nesta Archeron, right on time," Amarantha replied smoothly, stepping back and - most confusingly - tucking the gun away. Nesta immediately interposed herself between her sister and her opponent, her wand still held threateningly in front of her.

"What. Do. You. Want." Feyre had never heard that sort of rage coming from Nesta before this event.

After the event, it was sometimes all that came from her.

"Now, you see, Nesta," Amarantha began, beginning to circle the two sisters. Anyone who'd been on the street when the whole spectacle had started was now long gone. "We're actually very alike, you and I. Ruthless when we need to be, and we'll do anything for our sisters." Her eyes lingered on the youngest Archeron's unconscious body. "Which is why Feyre is not dead. Yet."

"What do you want." Her voice was unyielding; her grip on the wand had tightened.

Amarantha smiled. "I want you to do what your mother refused to do - and what she is now paying the price for. I want you to use your extensive magical abilities to resurrect my dead sister Clythia."

Feyre stopped breathing.

_Clythia._

"No," Nesta said instantly. "I _will not_."

Amarantha raised her hands in a reassuring gesture, that small smile still playing about her lips. "Now, I'm sure we can find the right incentive-"

She never got to finish the sentence before Nesta jabbed her wand forwards, a harsh word forcing its way out through her teeth. There was a flash, then Amarantha fell backwards, stunned.

Nesta's lips were pulled back in a snarl as she scanned the rooftops for the sharpshooter from earlier, but saw no one. She stalked forwards, then she lifted her foot above the woman's throat. And then she stomped downwards.

Feyre looked away when she heard the crack.

Nesta returned to where teenage Feyre lay on the ground. She picked up the car keys from where they'd toppled from her hands, and then she ripped off a strip of fabric from her top, leaving her midriff exposed. She used it to bind the bullet wound in Feyre's leg.

Then she lifted her sister into her arms, checked her pulse, and marched out of there.

* * *

Waking from this vision was far more startling than the others. This was how the cave tried to kill her.

Feyre's eyes flew open as she sucked in a breath, only to find herself choking. She thrashed about, but only succeeded in hitting herself against the stone sides of the pool, the green water glowing brightly against her eyeballs. She sucked in another breath, forgetting _she was underwater_ , and her gag reflex kicked in, expunging all liquid from her lungs.

She was going to drown.

She must've fallen in whilst in the vision - she needed to find a handhold - needed to get _out-_

She kicked for the surface, arms stretching out, but she wasn't getting any nearer, it was so far away-

Two strong hands gripped the fabric around her collarbone and then she was hauled out of the pool. Feyre flopped onto the rock with the grace of a fish on dry land, gasping and heaving for breath even as she retched thin, watery bile. There was a hand patting her on the back, the other still scrunched in the fabric.

"What the _fuck_ were you _doing_?" Nesta hissed, her righteous anger at her sister's sheer _recklessness_ shooting Feyre's thoughts back to that moment in the vision, to the place where Nesta had found her anger and never let go of it again.

Nesta must be extremely strong to haul Feyre out of the pool like that - but then, mustn't she have been extremely strong to be able to carry a wounded Feyre to safety so long ago?

Nesta was an incredibly strong woman.

" _Feyre._ "

"I needed to- needed to know," Feyre panted. She glanced up at her sister through damp, spiky eyelashes. "Amarantha said you were alike. When you last spoke."

Nesta's hovering hands froze. "Yes," she said stiffly. "What of it?"

"You have to know it's not true."

"I know it's not," Nesta snapped. "But she just wants her sister back. I can sympathise with that. Resurrection is wrong, against the laws of nature, and there is always a price not worth paying, but I can sympathise with her wish to have her sister back."

Feyre trying to stop shivering so much, said quietly, "I love you, too." Her sister nodded. "But Amarantha is back. She didn't give up, she didn't leave forever. She's back. And I don't think we're the only ones who're trying to stop her."

Lyra Night's vague allusions as to _getting in her way_ and _stopping her operations_ suddenly made sense. No one could interfere with affairs of the dead - and the soon-to-be-undead - better than a ghost.

"It's impossible."

Feyre, shocked, looked at her sister. "What?"

"It's not possible. Amarantha can't be back. She's dead."

"Nesta. . ." Feyre's voice trailed off. "She's back. She _kidnapped_ you."

" _I_ never saw her." Nesta voice was flat - reasonable. "It could have been anyone who kidnapped Cassian and me - maybe it was someone who wanted to wield the terror of Amarantha's name, even after her death. It doesn't mean she's alive. She's not."

"How can you be so sure?" Images of Nesta raising her foot, stomping down-

Her sister looked away. "Because I killed her. She's not back, she _can't_ be back - because I killed her." She met Feyre's eye again. "She threatened you," she said simply. "I killed her."


	11. Back To Reality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, as the title says. Everyone gets a reality check.

"Why is your hair wet?" was the first question Cassian asked Feyre when she and Nesta returned to the manor. Everyone ignored him. Feyre went upstairs to change out of her wet clothes - she'd probably already caught a cold as it was.

"Where did you go?" was the second question Cassian asked, once she'd come back in a fresh jumper and trousers. That one was ignored too.

Instead, Feyre's focus went straight to Rhys when she took a seat next to Nesta on one of the sofas. "So you say you saw Amarantha?"

Rhys gave a curt nod. "Yes."

"That's _impossible_ ," Nesta insisted, glaring first at Rhys, then at Feyre. "Amarantha is _dead_. You must have been hallucinating, or imagining things-"

"I know what I saw." Rhys's voice was quiet - adamant. "Amarantha is alive and at large again. Feyre," he added, glancing at her. "Didn't you know about Amarantha before I told you? Didn't you say that you already knew?"

Feyre shrank away from the accusatory glance Nesta shot her. "I- I may have been misinformed," she said slowly. "I mean, the person who told me might have been wrong-" _Not likely._ "-I might have misinterpreted her words-" _Impossible._ "-Hell, I could've just been hallucinating!"

That was an oddly reassuring thought. It was plausible, at least. More plausible than anything else going on.

"Who _did_ tell you that?" Rhys pressed. She avoided his gaze. "And why did you believe it so readily?"

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then met his gaze head on. Once she did, she found she couldn't look away. "A ghost told me." His face drained of colour, and he opened his mouth to speak, but she cut in first: "Although, as I said, it's perfectly possible I could have been hallucinating."

"I'm sorry," Cassian burst out then, "but did you say a _ghost_ told you?" She nodded, and he scoffed. "You Archerons and your so called _witchcraft_. That is _complete-_ "

Surprisingly enough - or maybe not, considering her and Cassian's history - it was Nesta, who had glowered even more ferociously at her poor explanation, that snapped, "Are you calling my sister a _liar_ -"

"It's alright, Nes." The words came out tired; Feyre rubbed her face with her hand. "I know it's outlandish. And I know you don't believe me either, so don't jump down his throat with any of that self-righteous bullshit."

Nesta's face contorted in a scowl, then her lip curved like she'd tasted something bitter, then she schooled her face into begrudging acceptance. She leaned forwards. "So. A _ghost_ told you. Whose ghost was it? And why did they want to talk to you in the first place?"

Feyre glanced at Rhys. "It was my sister," he admitted, with great reluctance. "My sister is apparently back from the afterlife to cause havoc for Amarantha's operations, and Amarantha didn't like that. So she came back to Velaris to a) target Lyra's living family in hopes of a hostage getting her to stop, or b) buying or stealing lightning in a bottle to dispel her ghost." He folded his hands in his lap. "She came to my flat one day and threatened me."

Ah. _That_ Feyre had not known. But she swept aside the guilt; there were more important things to worry about right now. "So we can't convince you that Amarantha is back," she said to Nesta. "Can you convince us that she isn't?"

Nesta stood from her seat. The snarl on her face would have halted invading armies in their tracks. "Yes." At Cassian's sceptical cough, she glared again. "Amarantha. Is. _D_ _ead_. And I can prove it."

* * *

"So, who're we visiting again?" Cassian whispered to Elain. She suspected she was the only Archeron sister who didn't terrify him. She wasn't sure how to feel about that. "This guy? Tarkin?"

"Tarquin," she corrected, just as her sister marched up the steps to the front door and rang the bell. "Tarquin Summers. He was the doctor who inspected Amarantha's corpse, according to Nesta. She's going to have him assure us that she was dead when he did."

Azriel chimed into the conversation then. "I was under the impression that resurrection was possible with the aid of a witch's magic." He frowned. "How do we know that Amarantha wasn't resurrected?"

Elain fought extremely hard to keep the full scope of her horror at his suggestion off her face - instead, it came out as faintly aghast. But the small, apologetic smile Azriel shot her and the shadow curling round her ear told her it was a fruitless endeavour anyway.

"Resurrection is wicked," she hissed under her breath - she didn't want Nesta hearing this. She didn't want another rant on the goods and evils of magic. "Resurrection is vile and deplorable and against the workings of nature. It takes a blood sacrifice, several thousand personal trinkets, a _highly_ skilled witch or wizard and massive amounts of energy to reanimate a corpse. If such a crime against humanity had been perpetrated, _every magic user for a thousand leagues would have felt it_."

Cassian seemed suitable awed and subdued, but Azriel. . . his smile was concerning.

"Massive amounts of energy. . ." he mused. "Like lightning in a bottle?"

Elain paused, opened her mouth, then shut it again. Fortunately, she was spared from actually answering that (seemingly rhetorical) question by the opening of the pale blue door they'd been waiting outside.

The man who opened it couldn't have been more than ten years older than Elain herself. He still had a sort of youthful vibrancy about him that she had to marvel at the fortitude of - if this was a man who saved people's lives and inspected corpses for a living, then he clearly hadn't let it get to him. His hair was almost as white as the teeth he flashed in a welcoming smile; they were a stark contrast against his ebony skin and dark eyes. He wore a turquoise woolly jumper, despite the mild summer temperatures, patterned with blue and green waves.

"Can I help you?" he asked politely, eyes first meeting Nesta's - the clear leader of the group's - before flitting round the rest. He nodded in greeting at Feyre when he noticed her standing at the base of the steps. She nodded back. "Hi, Feyre. These must be your sisters." He raised his eyebrows when he looked at Cassian. "And. . . who are you?"

Nesta stepped forwards. "We have something to ask you," she said bluntly, short - to the point. "And I'd prefer we said it inside. Would you mind if we came in?"

The way it was phrased, it was a request. The way it was said, it was a demand.

Tarquin's sunny demeanour dimmed a bit as his mouth tightened, but he continued to smile and waved them inside. Feyre went in first, quickly followed by Rhys, and then Elain was awkwardly shuffling past the man, feeling rather like they'd just invaded his territory.

Whereas on the outside, his house had come across as an ordinary terraced one - plain white front, a no-nonsense block-paint door, rusting iron railings likely there since before the War - this inside was vastly different. His abode was a study in soft blues and greens: homely, patterned furniture was dotted about, white-grey walls completing the effect. Several family photographs hung in the entry corridor. Ahead, Rhys paused to examine one.

Elain saw its subject was a teenage girl. She looked a lot like Tarquin, with the same nose and cheekbones and colouring, but there were definitive features that set them apart. The girl's sharp, bold eyebrows that naturally seemed to be compressed in a frown; the harsh way her mouth curled into a smile, like even in glee there were things to worry about; the tumble of hair more white - ivory, really - than silver, and the myriad of braids it was arranged into. She seemed like a person who worked hard for joy, only to dismiss it as useless when it finally came.

When Tarquin realised what Rhys was looking at, his expression froze on his face. Elain couldn't for the life of her tell what he was thinking. "That's my little sister, Cresseida," he said slowly, "from about ten years ago. She'll be slightly older than you, I think."

Rhys was frowning in contemplation. "She looks familiar."

"She's very pretty," Feyre threw in, likely to distract from whatever tactless thought she suspected was brewing in Rhys's head. "She looks a lot like you."

The look Tarquin shot Elain's sister was nothing short of grateful.

"Would you like to come through?" he asked. "I'm afraid I don't have that many seats in the living room - some of you will have to stand."

After they'd murmured that it was no problem, he led them through and, perched on the edge of her armchair like a peregrine about to take flight, Nesta began her explanation.

"You were the doctor that examined the woman known as Amarantha after her death, weren't you?" Tarquin's muscles locked up, but he nodded carefully. "Then can you confirm that she was, in fact, dead?"

Tarquin swallowed at the memory. "Yes. Yes, she was definitely dead. Died due to asphyxiation via a crushed trachea." He gave Nesta a look - Elain had to wonder what that meant. What had her sister done to do with Amarantha and she and Feyre hadn't?

What had happened that day Elain lost her father, her mother shortly afterwards, that Nesta had carried Feyre home covered in blood?

"What happened to the body?"

Tarquin shrugged at that, seeming to regain some of his composure. "We burned it. You could call it cremation, if you wanted to treat her properly, but we didn't sprinkle her ashes anywhere special. We just swept them into the bin."

"Right." Nesta stood. "Thank you."

Tarquin looked faintly perplexed; he looked at Feyre for confirmation. "That's all?"

"Yes," Nesta answered. "Thank you for your time." She left the room without waiting for Tarquin to show her the door. It was clear she expected them to follow.

Elain did, as did the Illyrians. Feyre hung behind for a moment to talk to Tarquin - apparently they knew a mutual acquaintance. Alis? - but she joined them soon enough.

"You see?" Nesta said finally, once they were back in the car. "It can't be Amarantha. She's dead and cremated. She can't come back."

"What does cremation have anything to do with it?" Cassian had to ask.

Fortunately, Feyre intervened before Nesta could snap something. "You can't resurrect someone without their body being intact. Otherwise you'll just have a stream of conscious ashes drifting about the world."

"Huh. You can't deny that that would be pretty cool."

Everyone ignored him.

"So, Rhysand," Nesta said instead. "You convinced _now_?"

He looked away from where he'd been staring out the window - had been since they entered the car. "Perhaps," he said coolly, and would say no more.

* * *

"You're not convinced, are you?" Feyre asked Rhys a little while later, when they were clearing up the mess of broken glass he'd made in the cellar. All the others had gone to the police station to _finally_ report the kidnapping and the attacks; they couldn't handle it on their own anymore. "You still think she's back."

He sighed for a moment, running his hand through his hair. He tried to sort out the thoughts in his head before answering.

". . .no," he said. "I'm not convinced. My sister came back as a _ghost_ to foil her plans - whatever they may be - and Amarantha confronted me about it. Even if I just hallucinated the meeting - _both_ meetings - then that doesn't explain how you saw Lyra's ghost. If I really was making up the whole thing, why would your subconscious be in on it?"

"I can see how that doesn't add up," Feyre admitted. Rhys wondered how much it hurt her pride to admit something like that, and swallowed a smug smirk. "But neither does the idea that Amarantha is alive and well when Nesta swears she saw her die. When Nesta-" She cut herself off suddenly.

Despite his (healthy) fear of the eldest Archeron, Rhys's curiosity was peaked. "When Nesta did what?"

"None of your business," Feyre snapped, a little harshly. Then she sighed, and her face softened a fraction. "But even so: it doesn't add up. It's confusing. And in times like these, confusion is a dangerous thing."

"Can't argue with that." For a moment, Rhys watched Feyre gather the small pile of broken glass they'd made and carefully slip it into the bin they'd brought down. A stray piece slipped and slit her thumb; she winced, bringing it up to her mouth to suck. "How do you know Tarquin?"

"Tarquin?" The words came out slightly garbled around the thumb in her mouth. "He's an associate of my boss's at the tattoo parlour. He drops by pretty regularly to say hi to her. Why?" Rhys didn't answered, feeling a heavy blush creep over his face and down his neck. "Were you. . . jealous?" It was Feyre's turn to smirk now. "Why? Tarquin's just an associate - a friend, I guess."

"And what am I?" He wondered why he wasn't breathing. Wasn't breathing important for life? Especially talking?

"Well, you _were_ this random annoying acquaintance. _Friend_ at a stretch, maybe." Feyre smirked for an instant, then the expression dropped, to be replaced by something more akin to contemplation. "But now. . . I don't know." She shrugged, but there was no nonchalance to it. "What do you want to be? Other than thief," she added, staring down at the mess of glass in the bin. "And all around mess-maker."

His breath shot out of him in a sigh of laughter. "Cruel thing."

"Cruel?" She raised an eyebrow. "That's a new one. Oh, and speaking of cruel. . ." She dug around in her pockets for a moment, before pulling out the glass bead bracelet she'd given Azriel. "I was planning on giving this to you. Consider it a warning for what might come to pass if you try and steal from us again."

It was joke. It was meant to be a joke, and he took it as a joke, so even as he slipped the bracelet onto his wrist he quipped, "What? You'll give me donkey ears?"

Feyre levelled a stare comprised of nothing but brute honesty at him. "Rhysand, if you try and steal from us again, I'll make Azriel's donkey ears look like the height of fashion compared to what I'll do to you."

Despite the humour in it, he swallowed. "Noted. Thank you for the bracelet."

Her smile was like iridescence on a raindrop: intangible and vague at first, then more focused the longer you watched it. "You're welcome."

They kept eye contact for a few moments. Then Feyre coughed, and the spell was broken.

She waved a negligent hand at the small dustbin they'd brought down. "I just need to dump this in the rest of the rubbish, then I'm dropping you, Cassian and Azriel home, aren't I?"

He nodded; he vaguely remembered some sort of arrangement like that being made during the drive back here. She nodded back at him, took a step forward, paused, then simply gave him a small smile and began to ascend the stairs.

"Feyre, wait," he called out, almost without meaning to.

She paused on the stairs, eyebrow cocked in question.

He swallowed. "About- about what I want to be. To you." Why was his heart beating so hard? His heart didn't usually beat like this. He surreptitously wiped his hands on his trousers.

Her face softened minutely - there was confusion there, but also. . . Hope? "What is it?"

He took a deep breath, then released it. He chuckled at his own speechlessness. Then he took another breath. "I-"

"Are you two coming up here or what?" came a voice from above. Cassian bounded down the stairs, almost knocking into Feyre, and looked between them questioningly. "I hate to break it to you, but I _do_ have classes to get to in the morning."

Feyre huffed a laugh, then sent Rhys a wry smile. "Alright. Let's get going then."

Rhys trailed meekly after the two of them. As they went, Feyre slipped her hand into his and squeezed it. He looked down at her in shock.

She smiled, and whispered, "Me too."

* * *

It was on the way home that things started to go wrong.

Cassian and Azriel lived nearer each other than Rhys did, so it ended up that they were the ones Feyre drove and dropped directly off at their respective flats, while Rhys had to walk a little way to his, ignoring Feyre's concerned looks, insisting he didn't need to be babied.

What he _did_ need was time to think over everything that had happened that day.

He'd just gone to Feyre's for astrophysics revision, then. . . everything had changed. And that moment with Feyre at the end. . .

He paused for a moment in his wandering to think of that, and it was only in the lack of his own footsteps that he heard those of his stalker.

Rhys whirled round instantly, hands raised to- what? Ward them off? But he'd barely squinted into the blackness of night obscuring his senses before the gunshot rang out.

The bullet had barely touched the skin of his chest before the tattoo pulsed and it was flung backwards again. Rhys began to back away.

But his assailant wasn't finished yet.

No; instead he heard the swish of air moments before something hard collided with his temple. He staggered back, head ringing, brain throbbing - there was a foot round his ankle - there was no floor under his feet-

There was rough, hard pavement against his cheek; a crushed fold in his wing; warm, sticky blood on his elbow and superficial pain that lanced up his arm and down his arm and up and down and up and down and up and down-

The pungent smell of chloroform, his sputtering breaths and then the waiting darkness, the oozing darkness, the invading darkness that swept into all the cracks and crevices of his mind and swallowed him whole.


	12. Two Hostages Have a Chat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exactly what it says in the title. Plus some panicking on Feyre's part.

Feyre rapped on the door to Azriel's flat so hard the skin split. She didn't feel it. Her heart was thundering, her breath dry in her throat. The moment Azriel opened the door, eyebrows cocked and expectant, she shoved the scrap of paper in her hand at him.

"Read it."

He did.

It was a short note, only a handful of words long. But time seemed to slow as she watched him stare at the page, colour draining from his tan face until it was the same shade as the sheet he held in shaking hands. After an agonisingly long moment, his gaze flicked back up to hers. "Is this real?"

Noticing the shadows darting around his face - she could've _sworn_ they hadn't been there two seconds ago - Feyre thought he might already know the answer. But she said it anyway. "Nothing tells me it's not." A breath. A deep, deep breath. "And Rhys didn't turn up to class this morning."

Azriel swore under his breath, low and vicious. "Come inside," he said, handing the paper back and glancing up and down the street behind her. "We can talk there."

She followed him through to the kitchen, where a bleary-eyed Cassian was stirring a mug of coffee. Feyre wasn't sure why he seemed so tired, considering it was nearly noon, but she didn't comment. Just nodded hello.

Fortunately, neither she nor Azriel had to get him to wake up any further, because he seemed to pick up on her frantic mood and blinked himself awake. "What is it?" His eyes landed on the paper in his hands. "What's that?"

She handed it to him. A pail of freezing water couldn't have woken him up as thoroughly as the contents of that letter did. "What? Where did you-"

"I found it tucked under the windscreen wipers of my car this morning." The words gushed out all in a rush - they were extremely panicked. _She_ was extremely panicked. "It wasn't wet or anything with dew, so it couldn't have been left overnight-"

"What is it?" Cassian demanded to know. There was panic in his face.

Feyre met his look head on. "A ransom note."

* * *

Rhys came to his senses slowly, like a diver resurfacing from the depths of the ocean painstakingly gradually to avoid the bends. One moment he knew nothing but thick suffocating darkness, then there was a cold, hard surface under his back, then he was swimming up and up and up and there was the heavy breathing of someone nearby, and then there was a groan being wrenched from his throat and light pierced his eyes as they fluttered open.

There was a rope chafing his wrists; his arms were tied slightly above and behind him, his shoulders thrown back against rigid wood. He was half leaning back on that wooden surface, half sitting on his bottom on a rough, brownish carpet. Ahead of him was a door flecked in white paint, firmly closed and, he would guess, locked. He couldn't turn his head very far without his neck twinging, but there seemed to be some sort of wardrobe to his right, and a door that might lead into a bathroom on his left.

Overall, his location came across as a cheaply comfortable bedroom, but a bedroom nonetheless.

Why was he here? And tied up?

"What. . ." The word was a rasp, more than a little slurred; he winced at the scraping inside his dry throat. But it still caught the attention of the other occupant of the room - the source of the breathing he'd heard earlier.

He felt the mattress - because that was the foot of a _bed_ he was tied to, that made sense now - shift against his back as they stood up from their undoubtably reclining position on it. Then he was aware of bare feet stepping into the corner of his eye, and the occupant crouched down beside him, frowning, catching his chin in one hand so she could study him better.

He craned his neck to get a good look at her. Ivory hair, cut short and ragged; dark eyes, narrow and calculating and _bitter_ ; brows that seemed to naturally compress into a frown. His eyes widened.

He mouthed a word, and the hand released his chin as it induced a coughing fit. Eventually his shoulders stopped shaking; when they did he looked up at her again.

"Cresseida Summers?"

* * *

"Are you sure this is from her?" Nesta's scepticism was making another appearance, and Feyre understood that, _Cauldron_ she understood it so well but _why was she just sitting there arguing when Rhys was in danger_ \- "I thought we'd settled that Amarantha was dead." She sat back, challenge in her eyes. Feyre was severely regretting demanding she come by Azriel's flat as soon as possible.

She was just about ready to shout at her sister, but she wasn't the one who did so in the end. Nor was it Cassian, who seemed the most prone to emotional outbursts.

It was Azriel.

"Rhys is gone." Feyre flinched at the venom in his voice, and she saw that Nesta had to suppress one too. "Rhys is gone, he isn't picking up his phone, we've received a ransom note from a person calling themselves Amarantha, and you're faffing about wondering if she's _dead_ or not?"

"How do we even know Rhysand is in any danger-"

"Is that even being disputed? We know he's in danger - and you know it too, Nesta Archeron. So who gives a _shit_ whether it's really Amarantha or not? I'm more interested in knowing whether or not my brother in all but blood is going to _die_ \- and whether the city council will lift a finger to help us."

He sat back, breathing heavily. Nesta had to look away.

"So what do we do now?" Her voice was quiet.

Feyre took a calming breath. "We do exactly as Azriel suggested - we report this to the city council. Maybe they'll stir themselves to help."

"If Amarantha hasn't paid them off already." Cassian sounded grim.

"They will." Feyre took a deep breath - she would _not_ give up hope _now_. "They have to."

* * *

Cresseida's eyes narrowed. "Who are you? And how-"

"I met your brother, Tarquin," he explained hastily. "He has a picture of you in the hallway. And I'm Rhysand Night. I'd offer you my hand to shake, but. . ." He wriggled his bound wrists.

She didn't crack a smile. "Why are you here." It didn't sound like a question - it was more of a demand.

He blinked. When he realised she was serious, he said slowly, "Well, I was walking. Then someone knocked me out. And now I'm here."

He wriggled his wrists again to emphasise the point. After a moment of blankness, Cresseida gave him a pitiful look and untied him. The ropes sagged round his shoulders; he brushed them off as he rubbed at his wrists.

Cresseida twisted her lips into a thin line. "You must know why you're here. Amarantha wouldn't have kidnapped you for no reason."

"Oh, it probably has something to do with the fact that my sister is currently a ghost haunting her and in general making a nuisance of herself," he admitted candidly. "But really, it could be any number of things. I've not been the most cooperative citizen to her dastardly plans."

"Don't joke about this."

"I'm not." He watched hard face harden into scepticism. "I'm telling the truth. Lyra Night is a ghost, and I think there's a chance Amarantha's trying to resurrect someone. At least that's what Feyre mentioned." He frowned for a moment, then, "What are _you_ doing here?"

She raised her eyebrows, and for a moment the motion reminded him of Feyre. "I've been here for years. I'm a hostage."

"For whom?"

"My brother." The words were clipped; Cresseida didn't seem to reveal any more about this than she had to.

Rhys was the one who raised his eyebrows this time. He should probably stop pushing, should probably not alienate his apparent cellmate, but. . . There was something _important_ here. Something he had to understand. "And why does Amarantha require a hostage for _Tarquin_?"

"Because he's a doctor!" she snapped. "He's the doctor who examined her 'dead body'!"

Rhys's breath hissed out of him. Oh. _Oh._ "She wasn't actually dead." No reaction. "Nesta didn't manage to kill her."

Cresseida's face was irritated. "Nesta who?" He opened his mouth; she shook her head. "Never mind. And _yes_ ," she ground out the word, "she was still alive. But Tarquin had to lie about it, or. . ." She couldn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.

Silence fell for a moment. "So Amarantha is really back?" he asked mournfully.

She pressed her lips together, then the pinched expression collapsed. She looked tired. "Yes," she said. "Without a doubt."

Rhys closed his eyes for a moment. He'd been right. He needed to tell Feyre.

But how? There was no way out of here, presumably, since Cresseida had been imprisoned for years. Standing up, a cursory glance at the only window in the room showed it was heavily barred and padlocked. There was no way to reach her. . .

. . .unless he used magic.

More specifically, _his_ magic.

He took a deep breath. It had been a long while since he actively tried to contact someone else with his mind when he didn't even know if they were nearby. But he'd connected with Feyre recently, if not entirely by his initiation - it was more of an accident really - but maybe. . .

He closed his eyes again, and forced himself to breathe. In, out. In, out.

Then he dived into his own mind and _reached_.

The path he'd taken to visit Feyre's mind last time glowed faintly, like she'd left some sort of effervescent fairy dust in her wake. He followed it for a few paces, then he was aware of a pulsing, spherical _awareness_ , just close enough for him to brush his mental fingers against it, then it _leapt_ under the touch like a bird's wings and-

_Rhys?_ A questioning tone, hopeful, desperate. _Rhys!_

_Yup._

_Thank the Cauldron._ There was more to those frank words, more emotion behind it, swelling and writhing and threatening to flood like a discontented sea, but she kept it back. He was only aware of one thing: relief. _Where are you?_

_I. Don't. Know._ He ground his teeth together, ignoring Cresseida's questioning glance. _I just woke up somewhere, and there's. . . Tarquin's sister's here. Cresseida. She's a hostage, Tarquin was forced to lie about Amarantha being dead, she's still alive and kicking-_

_Okay._ Her mental 'voice' was deceptively calm. _That makes sense. I'll just have to use the bond to track you, I suppose._

_Please do._

_I'll be right back._

He opened his eyes, forced himself to breathe again. In, out. He'd done it. In, out. Feyre was coming. In, out. He was saved.

Then came the sound of footsteps.

Cresseida instantly tensed up, bringing her knees up to her chest like a startled armadillo. Rhys gritted his teeth again at her alarm. _Please don't be coming to us, please don't be coming to us, please don't be coming to us-_

The door swung open. Rhys swore.

Because there stood Amarantha. In the flesh. She was carrying a shotgun.

_Hurry, Feyre!_

She smiled when he met her eye.

_Please!_

"No need to worry," she chirped, deceptively cheerful. "I'm not going to kill you, Rhysand. You've not been a particularly great threat so far, and I _can't_ kill you anyway, can I? Not with that tattoo. But your lives are spent."

She raised the gun; he tensed every muscle, every tendon, everything in him striving to _run_.

"So, we both know the magic needs a source. And young Feyre Archeron will die if I shoot you, won't she?" She cocked her head. "Really, I don't know why anyone bothers with this sort of thing. It seems needlessly dramatic."

She lowered the gun; he relaxed slightly. He closed his eyes for an instant.

"But Feyre is being _such_ a nuisance." He opened them again in horror. No. _No._ "And her sister appears to need some further. . . _incentive_."

He didn't even have time to think before she fired.


	13. Blood and Guilt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go badly.

For as long as Feyre could remember, she'd always hated police stations. Maybe it was something about seeing all these officers in their day-to-day lives, what with sandwiches left on the counter, uniforms not fully buttoned, slouching in chairs and chatting irreverently even as the tiled floor beneath the welcome mat bore the symbol of the precinct: Alpha Astra and the three stars that hung above it on midsummer's and midwinter's day. It was more difficult to trust their decisions when you saw them being human - more difficult to believe that they weren't prone to the same character flaws as everyone else.

But right now, Feyre swallowed that distaste and kept her head down. Nesta, noticing her discomfort, slipped her a hand, which Feyre gratefully gripped onto. Casting her sister a sideways glance, she noticed that she was sitting up, back rigid, staring mindlessly at the white plaster wall. Feyre pursed her lips; Nesta still didn't believe Amarantha was back.

"It's possible, you know," she said under her breath, shooting the officers in the room a cautionary glance. None of them were within earshot. "Maybe the- maybe it wasn't fatal, and Tarquin inspected the wrong body - Cauldron, maybe he was _lying_ -"

"What reason would he have to lie?" Her sister's voice was just as quiet as hers, but flat. Brutal. "What would be the _point_?"

"I'm just saying you can't rule out the possibility," Feyre tried again. Nesta pressed her lips together until they went white. "Why are you so hung up on this, anyway? Why is it so hard for you to believe?"

No answer. But a too-long blink, a flutter in the hand Feyre was holding, like an aborted attempt at clenching her fists, and the harsh twist of Nesta's mouth said it all.

Feyre knew her sister better than anyone - maybe even better than Elain. She knew how to read her expressions.

"You're guilty," she realised, voice hushed not out of necessity anymore, but a sort of misplaced awe. "You're guilty. You- you thought you'd _killed_ someone for years, and now it turns out that it wasn't true, that it was just more emotional manipulation and torment for nothing, and you can't accept that the reason you've been carrying this heavy weight for so long - this _anger_ for so long - is bullshit. Meaningless. You don't want the way you think and feel to have been built on a lie."

Nesta was as white as a sheet. Her hand wasn't squeezing Feyre's anymore; it was limp, slack. Her mouth slightly agape, she turned towards the younger woman, eyes glassy. Her lips mouthed silent words, like she was trying to speak but couldn't quite remember how. Her expression was empty - Feyre words had netted all of her secrets and yanked them out with hooks. Now she was raw and hollow inside.

She tried to speak again. "I-"

"They've agreed to help look for Rhys." Azriel came over then, quickly followed by Cassian and Elain. "But they have no idea where to start. Feyre," Azriel turned to her specifically, "you mentioned that you and Rhys can communicate mind-to-mind, right? Can you contact him now, see if you can learn anything?"

"That would be useful," said a new voice, its natural inflections faintly wry. Feyre looked up to see a ginger policeman with a scar across one of his eyes looking at her expectantly. He noticed her gaze, and offered his hand. "Officer Lucien Vanserra," he said. "I'll be the one in charge of the investigation for your friend."

"Feyre Archeron," she replied distantly. "And I can try to contact him-"

A clumsy force reaching for her in the back of her mind: familiar, gentle, _desperate_. She hastily tapped back. _Rhys?_

"-now," she finished. This was apt timing. _Rhys!_

_Yup._ His tone was so _cavalier_ despite his evident fear that she was almost tempted to laugh.

_Thank the Cauldron._ She tried to stop herself from broadcasting too much relief at the contact; she didn't want to overwhelm him. Instead, she tacked straight onto the matter at hand. _Where are you?_

_I. Don't. Know._ He oozed frustration, and she empathised; she was fighting to keep from grinding her teeth herself. _I just woke up somewhere, and there's. . . Tarquin's sister's here. Cresseida. She's a hostage, Tarquin was forced to lie about Amarantha being dead, she's still alive and kicking-_

_Okay_ , she affirmed, even as there was a slight thrill of pleasure at having her theory proved right. _That makes sense. I'll just have to use the bond to track you, I suppose._

_Please do._ The words were tight.

_I'll be right back._ She broke off the connection. "I need a map. Now."

One was shoved into her lap, and grabbing the pencil off the table, she swiftly marked a cross where the police station was, then stretched _out_ , away from herself, for Rhys. The connection flared to life again briefly - she wasn't sure if the echoing _Hurry, Feyre!_ was a message from Rhys or a manifestation of her own panic - and marked an area on the map.

Studying it, she swallowed.

It was one of a row of townhouses - townhouses that overlooked the street where everything had happened. Where her father had died, where Nesta had-

"He's there," she said aloud, jabbing a finger at the map. She looked up to meet Vanserra's eye. "I'm sure of it." _It has the torturous sense of humour Amarantha possesses, at least._

"Alright," Vanserra said. "Then that's where we're headed."

* * *

It was a seemingly innocuous townhouse that they approached, but Lucien didn't doubt that girl's - Feyre's - judgement. He'd heard too much about the Archerons to dismiss the very real powers he imagined that family had, the youngest member included. Not to mention his cousin Helion was equally as strange and gifted, and Lucien still had the fond memories (and photographs) of that day so many years ago when his cousin had come home from magic school (or something like that) with donkey ears.

He'd heard he had Feyre Archeron to thank for that, too.

So he approached the townhouse with all the apprehension he would treat another potential crime scene with. He knocked on the door once, twice, then let his hand drop and waited for it to open. He half-expected it wouldn't.

But then there were footsteps, and then the door was swinging open, and then there was a girl standing behind it.

Lucien blinked. The girl blinked back.

"Can I help you?" she asked, somewhat aggressively, but there was also something about it that seemed. . . monotone? Repetitive? Passionless? Lucien shook himself, and tried to focus; it wasn't important right now.

He opened his mouth to speak, but the girl - teenager, more like; she must be about fourteen or fifteen - beat him to it. Her eyes - a startlingly shiny grey - had alighted on his uniform. "You're the police," she said. "You're here for her."

There was no need to clarify who "her" was. Lucien just nodded grimly.

The girl just pursed her lips, glanced behind her, then at the street beyond him and his team. "Well then," she said flatly. "Come in."

* * *

"About, what you said," Nesta began awkwardly. Feyre tore her attention away from Cassian, Azriel and Elain, who all seemed to be getting peculiarly invested in the sports game being shown on the screen - at least, the boys were. Elain seemed to be trying to keep the peace. "I'm not guilty." The words were uncertain - ish.

Feyre gave her a look. "Yes you are, Nes."

"I'm _not_." The fire was back in her sister's voice now; Feyre was back on home turf. The uncertainty had been _unnerving_. "I did it because I hated her, because she deserved it. I most certainly never felt _guilty_ -"

"Nesta, I know you," Feyre interrupted loudly; Elain, ever the peacekeeper, glanced over at them briefly but ultimately returned her attention to whatever spat she was sorting through with Azriel and Cassian. "I know you. You _are_ guilty, and you even regret it somewhat, even if you won't admit it to yourself."

"No," Nesta insisted. She was _fuming_ now. " _No_."

"Nesta, just _listen_ -"

"No!" She pushed herself off the chair and stood over Feyre, finger pointing accusingly. " _You_ listen, Feyre Archeron. You do not get to tell me what I'm feeling and why, you do not get to police my emotions, you do _not_ get to _psychoanalyse_ me, _especially_ on a matter which you weren't even conscious to witness! I _saved your life_ ; can't you just stay out of it?!"

" _No_." The word was vehement. Feyre refrained from standing up to shout herself, but she was tempted to. "I can't stay out of it, because I can see that the weight of all this is _killing you_ , Nesta. You've been thorny and spiky ever since the event, and I love you, but you are hurting yourself just as much as you hurt other people like that, and it needs to stop. It _needs to_ -"

There was a searing pain, a tiny fist punching through the skin between the ribs and shooting through the flesh and bones until-

Her hand flew to her chest.

"Nesta." The word was a rasp. Her hand came away from the wound red. " _Nesta_." She didn't know why she was saying it, per se; it was just reassuring to say. A simple, two syllable, _familiar_ word. " _Nesta_."

Her breathing was ragged - and it _hurt_. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to speak, it hurt to _exist_ , and when she peeled back her jacket to reveal the blood staining the white blouse beneath, that hurt too.

"Rhys." That word was easier to say too - quick, painless. (Except it wasn't painless, because this hurt _so much_ -) " _Rhys_."

Her heart was still beating. It'd had a hole blasted in it because she'd been stupid enough to give the protection tattoo to a man who apparently had a _target_ on his back, but it was still beating, the blood still ebbed and flowed, even if that meant it ebbed and flowed _out_ , spilling down her front and staining the cushions of the seat she was sitting on with its dark, dark colour-

"Feyre." Nesta uttered the word, horror freezing her to the spot. The woman stretched out a hand to- to do what? Grip her shoulder? Plug the weeping wound? " _Feyre_."

Then Nesta was sitting next to her, and she actually _was_ , in some strange flight of fancy, trying to plug the wound with her _bare hands_ , but couldn't she understand that it was her _heart_? That she was going to-

That she was going to-

Over Nesta's shoulder, Elain was running over to them. Her lips moved; she seemed to be screaming something too, but Feyre couldn't hear it. Everything was fuzzy in her head, and Nesta's bloody hands gripped the sides of her face but she couldn't hear her pleas of _Feyre, Feyre, Feyre_ and everything _hurt_ -

"Nesta," she breathed - or rather, she _thought_ she breathed it, she _couldn't hear herself_ breath it, but she _hoped_ she did. _Cauldron, I hope I did_. . . "Nes. . .ta. . ."

Then Elain was next to her, shaking her shoulder, and shouting in her ear, but everything had gone dark.

Everything was spinning.

She couldn't _hear_ -

In some distant corner of her brain, Feyre wondered what had happened to Rhys.


	14. Falling Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit goes down.

Rhys stared at his chest. The bullet had gone in - he'd _felt_ it go in - but then the tattoo had sprung to life, and he'd felt its pulses fling the bullet back out of his heart, watched as the skin and muscle stitched itself back together, thought about only one thing.

Feyre.

What would happen to Feyre?

Amarantha waved her hand dismissively. " _That_ should have taken care of a few problems. Feyre certainly picked up her mother's proclivity for _trouble_."

Rhys felt heat flush through him; he clenched his fists and staggered to his feet. There was a rush in his head as he did - dark blotches appeared and disappeared and only began to clear after he blinked hard, thoroughly. But Amarantha's face, haloed by a crown of crimson hair - crimson, like blood, like hatred, like love - stood out loud and clear to him. It swelled in his mind, until she was bloated to twice her normal size, until she wasn't a petite and dangerous woman but a large one, a larger-than-life threat, her face round and white. It looked like the surface of the moon.

It looked like a target.

He was dimly aware that he was panting, but ripped all the air out of his lungs anyway with a bright, bloodcurdling roar of fear, anger, hatred - _so much hatred_ \- and lunged at that- that _monster_ , the one gazing at him and smiling.

He didn't make it two steps. Cresseida caught his ankle and he toppled over.

Amarantha tutted. "Honestly, Rhysand, I thought you were more civilised than that."

"You - _bitch_ -" He didn't know who he was addressing - Cresseida or Amarantha, there was just so much _anger_ in him and he _didn't know what to do with it_ and Feyre was- he didn't even _know_ what was going to happen to Feyre - it wasn't like she could _die_ , right? That's what she'd said would happen, but- but Feyre couldn't just. . . die, could she?

_Yes, she could_ , he told himself. _Just like Lyra. Just like Mama, and Papa, and every other one of Amarantha's victims. This woman could just as easily steal her life as she's stolen everyone else's._

But no, Rhys decided, lying on the floor and looking up at the silhouette above him. Feyre _wouldn't_ die. He _refused to let it happen_.

_What power do you have over life and death to make that promise?_

He ignored the thought.

Amarantha was smiling again - she was _always_ smiling; the more torment the better, in her mind. "Amren," she called out, "come treat our guest's wounds."

Rhys had a few choice words to say about the use of the word _guest_ , but Amarantha had left before he could even open his mouth. In her place, the doorway was filled by a too-thin teenage girl - fifteen at most - with choppy dark hair and prominent cheekbones. Though her stature was less than intimidating - scrambling into an upright position, Rhys didn't even have to tilt his head up to meet her eye, even when _kneeling_ \- her eyes were a wild, metallic silver, and the set of her mouth was. . . well, terrifying.

"Who the fuck are you?" rang out in the room then, cutting through Rhys's shock; for a moment he thought it was newcomer's question, addressed to him. He opened his mouth to answer before it clicked in his mind: _he_ had been the one to ask that.

There was a rebelliousness in the quirk of her mouth then; a challenge in the twitch of her eyebrow. "You heard the bitch. I'm Amren."

Rhys collected himself enough to raise an eyebrow, but his heart was still beating hard. "No last name?"

"No last name."

"Huh." It was less statement than exhale of breath; he didn't know what was going on. He had _no idea_ what was going on. "And. . . what are you doing here?"

"Checking you for injuries. Apparently." She glanced over him once. "You seem fine. Side effect of that tattoo the bitch is always ranting about, I assume."

She had a peculiar, clipped accent - it so perfectly contrasted with the way the sentences and words seemed to drawl into one another, until it was all one mess of syllables. Rhys wondered what she was doing here - and how she knew Amarantha ranted about the tattoo often.

It was Cresseida who said, "Amren is a political hostage turned. . . slave, I guess. Her parents never paid the ransom, but Amarantha didn't really want to kill off 'such a pretty face' so she's kept on here as an unpaid servant."

"An unpaid servant _is_ a slave," Rhys pointed out.

Cresseida's lips flattened into a thin line. "Exactly."

"If you don't mind not talking about me as if I'm not here," the girl in question began irritably - and somewhat defensively - "then I'll just be going-"

She was cut off by a thundering knock on the door. Silence, for a moment, then it came again.

There was a shrill, unintelligible shout from down the hall; Amren rolled her eyes. "I suppose I'll just get that then." There was no response from either of the occupants of the room, so she left without a word.

There was murmuring from downstairs, then footsteps walking, then footsteps running. Cresseida tensed next to him as the footsteps became loud enough that they were on the same floor as them, then the door burst open.

Amarantha was back, and there was murder in her eyes.

" _You_ ," she hissed, jabbing a finger at Rhys. " _What did you do._ "

"I don't-"

"There are _police officers_ on the landing downstairs, I have nowhere to run, and you think I'm stupid enough to believe you had nothing to do with it?" She lunged forward and gripped the back of his head by his hair, shaking him. " _What did you do_."

Despite the dizziness scrambling most coherency in his brain, Rhys felt a spike of vicious satisfaction. When he spoke, his voice was cold and clear. "I am from a family of gifted telepaths - daemati. And I am close with one of the most accomplished witches of this age." Amarantha shook him again - this time she slammed his head against the wooden bed frame. He gritted his teeth, blinked stars out of his eyes, and _glared_ at her. " _What the fuck do you think I did_."

She released him very suddenly, yanking half of his hair out as she did. "I am going to kill you," she seethed, hand twitching for the gun at her back. "How? Feyre Archeron is dead - _how_ did you get a message through to her and your ragtag _friends_ about where you are when _you don't even know where you are yourself_.

If he had been less stressed, more thoughtful, Rhys might have quipped something about Feyre being _the most accomplished witch of this age_. But he wasn't so only one part of that tirade was registered in his mind.

" _Feyre. Is not. Dead_."

Amarantha stepped back to survey him. And then that simmering rage in her face cooled to something akin to a smile.

_Cauldron, I hate it when she smiles._

"Oh, poor little Rhysand," she cooed. "In denial of it already. But I advise you: use those so called _daemati_ powers of yours. Reach for her mind. Prove to yourself that you are right, and I am wrong. Please," she simpered. "I _beg_ you."

Rhys ground his teeth against each other, slow, steady. He was loathe to give the bitch what she wanted. But. . .

_I need to know_.

So, cockiness in his stare, he reached for the part of his mind that Feyre had come from, and groped about in the dark.

_Feyre?_

No answer. There wasn't even a flicker of a presence there.

_Feyre!_

Nothing.

It wasn't even like she was intentionally blocking him out, or too far away for her presence to be recognisable - she was _gone_. She just _wasn't there_.

His eyes widened as he looked up to meet Amarantha's gaze. _No._

"No."

His breathing was shuddering, his chest caving in on itself.

_"NO!"_

His left hand flew to his right. Felt down his wrist, down, just past the sleeve, to where the bracelet of starglass beads was, cold against his palm, unheated by his skin and body heat. The present that Feyre had given him, all he had left of her now-

No.

_No_.

Amarantha's smile had hardened into a sneer at the sight of the bracelet. "What's that? A gift from your girlfriend?"

He was shaking. He was shaking, and gripping the glass tighter and tighter until he was afraid it would break, but then- it wasn't there. He floundered, panicked, but it was there, in Amarantha's hands, and she was turning it over between her fingers.

_Glass that's shot through with threads of coloured dye, starglass, what the bottle of lightning was made of. . ._

"Give. That. Back." He almost didn't recognise his voice. It was harder than concrete, than steel, than diamond.

"No." Amarantha squared her shoulders. "The police are downstairs." And indeed, there was the sound of smashed items being thrown, banging, like there was a fight going on below them. "They will be up here soon. You have taken _everything_ from me!" she finished with a guttural cry. She raised the hand holding the bracelet above her head. "So I will take the last remaining thing of _her_ from you!"

Rhys watched as she through the bracelet down. Everything was slow, rhythmic, calm. He could feel the press of air on his face as he reached forward to grab it, he could see Amarantha's lips press into a line of grim determination, could watch the bracelet turn over and over in mid-air, the light glinting in its beads, the death streak of a falling star. . .

He watched as it landed on the carpet, miraculously without shattering.

He sighed in relief. But as he breathed back in again, a shadow fell over the bracelet, and then a boot-clad foot, and then there was the sound of shattering glass, and then someone was screaming - _he_ was screaming. . .

But so was Amarantha.

Rhys was screaming, because the bracelet was _gone_ , Feyre's last gift to him was _gone_ , and Amarantha was screaming because- because-

She was being fried alive. Burned from the inside out. Her eyes rolled back in her head; her body was racked with convulsions; white and purple light lanced across her skin, glowed within her muscles, turned her veins and arteries black with ash and soot.

She toppled backwards after an age, her scream a whimper in a ravaged throat, her eyes fixed on some distant horizon nobody could see. And when her foot fell away from the carpet, he saw the fine chain the beads had been hung on beneath it, surrounded by shards of shattered glass.

Shattered glass. _Starglass_. The glass that could contain lightning itself within a bottle-

The bracelet given to him by a witch who could cast the spell that bound the lightning _in_ the bottle-

Rhys was dimly aware of Cresseida's panicked breaths as he knelt down beside the smoking wreckage. Around where the bracelet had been, the carpet was scorched and charred in a perfect circle.


	15. Afterlife and After Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhys grieves.

"Tell me again," Vanserra repeated steadily, leaning over the desk to look Rhys in the eye, "what happened?"

Rhys lowered his gaze. "She told me Feyre was dead," he repeated dully. "And when she heard the police downstairs, she- she got angry, I suppose. She got angry, and wanted to punish me, so she shattered the bracelet Feyre gave me, and. . ."

"And?" Vanserra prompted, scribbling something in his notepad.

"She shattered the bracelet. Unleashed the lightning."

Vanserra kept scribbling. Rhys was begrudgingly impressed by how unflappable he seemed. "I see. And were you aware that the bracelet you wore contained said lightning?"

"No."

"Miss Archeron never told you before she gave it to you?"

"Never."

The officer frowned at his desk. "I'm fairly sure that violates more than a few safety laws, but there's no use prosecuting a dead woman, so you're free to go. But please remain contactable by the police department; we're running an investigation into Tarquin's doings and may need you as a witness."

Rhys didn't move. His heart had contracted to fill his throat. He had to breathe around it several times before he forced out the words, "So it's true then? That Feyre's- Feyre is-"

"Dead?" The sympathy on Vanserra's face was intolerable. "Yes. We don't know how or why it happened, but she started bleeding from a fatal wound in her chest while having a conversation with her sister at the station. Preliminary autopsies suggest it was a gunshot to the heart, but quite frankly we're all befuddled by what exactly happened to her."

Rhys couldn't breathe. _Feyre-_

_Feyre. . ._

The noise of the door swinging shut behind him echoed as he left, like the dying traces of a stopped heartbeat.

He ran down the halls of the police precinct and staggered out into the street. His vision was blurry, but fortunately the streets and roads were deserted, empty; the pink light of dusk was wrapping Velaris in her warm, woollen shawl and Rhys was desperate to lose himself in its gentle caress.

He leaned against a wall, fiercely blinking away the tears, irrational fear causing his heart to beat a tattoo against his chest. Amarantha was dead, she wasn't coming back, the lightning had made sure of that, and no common thugs scared him after _her_ -

And the phrase _beating a tattoo against his chest_ hurt too, because he _had_ a tattoo over his chest, and _it had killed Feyre_ -

"Rhys?"

He whirled, and for a moment all he could see through the haze of tears was a bright white glow and he thought: _Please_.

_Please let it be Feyre returning as a ghost._

_Please, Cauldron, God, anyone who's listening._

_Please._

It wasn't Feyre. It was Lyra, and he felt guilty for being disappointed. He hadn't seen his sister in years, and he was _disappointed_ at the chance to speak to her again? The chance to tell her how _sorry he was_?

"Don't you dare apologise to me," was the first thing she said, "because you think you failed me. You were sixteen, Rhys. _Sixteen_."

He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and studied his sister. She still looked the same age as the day she died; he was older than her by a few years now. Three years his elder, she'd always seemed so ancient to him as a child, and now. . .

She seemed practically _infantile_.

"But I should've stopped it," he insisted, his voice hoarse. "I should've been able to stop Mama from dying, Papa from dying, you from dying. _Feyre_ from dying. I should've done something. But I _failed_."

"Yeah, about Feyre." Lyra frowned. "She gave me a message to give you: get your head out of your arse. It was her who put the lightning in the bracelet and didn't tell you. It was Amarantha who shot you. Her death isn't your fault."

"That's-" _Bullshit_. He cut off the sentence before he could finish it; Lyra would only argue, and no amount of his own conviction would change hers. "It still doesn't change that I should've come home from school earlier that day. All I was staying to do was attend my stupid astronomy club, and I didn't listen to Dad when he said we needed to be back early because we were leaving the city for a while, I was bitter that we had to for no apparent reason, and it meant-"

"It meant we were still in Velaris when Amarantha came for us," Lyra finished gently. "It meant that we were boxed into the flat when the thugs knocked down the door and murdered us all." The only sound was his heavy, desperate breaths. He clenched his fists. "Is that what you were going to say?"

Rhys nodded stiffly.

"Maybe if you'd come home faster then we would have left sooner," she agreed. "Maybe. But you don't _know_ that, Rhys. You don't even know _why_ Amarantha was after our family: you only know that she _was_. So don't bother trying to blame yourself for our deaths, when you _know for sure_ that _she was the one who killed us_. Which makes _her_ the one responsible." She tried to smile, but her eyes were watery. "Not you."

Rhys bent his head to hide the tears in his own eyes. "Why did she want to kill us?" he asked. His voice was gruff. "Why did she let me live?"

"Because you were afraid - terrified. Absolutely terrified. And she knew you either didn't know her secret, or wouldn't tell it, because you were so afraid."

"What secret?"

Lyra sighed, and couldn't quite meet his eye. "Feyre's father told our father that Amarantha was planning on resurrecting her sister, in hopes that he could contact other witches and wizards and stopping her from being able to employ anyone in Velaris to do it. Malorie Archeron herself couldn't, because she was under close watch by the bitch, but one day her husband thought he was in the clear and asked Dad to do it."

"And Amarantha found out," Rhys guessed. "And slaughtered us all for it, to keep that secret a secret."

". . .yes," Lyra admitted. "Feyre's parents were already dead. Ours were the only loose ends she needed to tie up."

Rhys felt a fresh onslaught of tears begin to come on. He couldn't deal with this, not on top of Feyre's death. "Please," he asked. "Go. I can't-"

"I know." He closed his eyes when she added, almost hesitantly, "You should go to her funeral. It'll offer some closure."

He ignored her, keeping his eyes closed and his breaths even, until eventually she left.

* * *

Rhys couldn't bring himself to go to the funeral, but he did visit her grave.

He ran his fingers across the surface of the gravestone. She'd been buried in an orchard just outside the Archerons' manor; apparently this was where her mother had been buried, and her mother's mother, and her mother's mother's mother. Legacy and tradition were important to the Archerons.

The words _Feyre Marie Archeron_ were cut cleanly into the stone - so cleanly that Rhys dimly wondered if magic had had something to do with it, rather than just a stone mason's tools. His fingers caught on the _Marie_ ; he hadn't known that was her middle name. He hadn't known she had a middle name at all.

There was a lot of things he hadn't known.

He knelt in front of the gravestone, and even then it didn't feel real. He couldn't comprehend that when he next went into his astrophysics class, she wouldn't be in the seat next to him, her sardonic eyebrow raised in welcome, her short bursts of laughter at his jokes, swiftly muffled under the teacher's glare.

He couldn't comprehend that her remains were rotting in the damp earth below his knees, worms crawling in her eye sockets, beetles scuttling over her pale hands and shoulders, nature claiming when nature created.

He couldn't comprehend that despite the strength of her spirit, her body had been as fragile as her own starglass, bright and sharp and easily broken.

A pressure built in his chest. Something was expanding there, crushing his lungs and his trachea and his heart and he _couldn't breathe_ -

It came as a surprise when his shoulders heaved with thick, gurgle sobs. When tears rushed to his eyes, he didn't bother to blink them away. His vision swam.

"Feyre," he choked out, then he closed his eyes and bowed his head. _"Feyre."_

She was gone.

She was _gone_ , and he-

He couldn't-

He just _couldn't_ , couldn't do so much: couldn't save her, couldn't go on, couldn't believe this was even happening. He just _couldn't_.

He seized a fistful of soil from beneath his hand and flung it at the headstone. It scattered everywhere, spotting the grave with flecks of brown.

Why hadn't she told him? Why hadn't she told him _anything_?

Why hadn't she told him that her middle name was Marie? That she had her own personal history with Amarantha? That her bracelet was a weapon he could have used to destroy that bitch, once and for all?

For his parents. For Lyra. For _her_.

And why hadn't he asked? Why hadn't he made friends with her earlier, so they'd have had more time? Why hadn't he bothered to divulge his own rocky experiences with Amarantha? Why hadn't he wondered why she'd decided to give him the bracelet? Why hadn't he told her how he felt, all that time back when she handed him the chance?

And why hadn't he saved her? Why couldn't he save her now?

_There's no coming back from death_ , he tried to tell himself. There was nothing he could do.

Except. . . Amarantha had apparently gone after the Archerons because she wanted her sister resurrected. Because they could do it, if they wanted.

Because Feyre and Elain and Nesta - now just Nesta and Elain - could reverse _death_ -

He was running before he realised it.

* * *

"Can you resurrect her?"

He was being rude, he knew. He'd burst into their house uninvited, having run full pelt from the orchard, and barged through the door to the study where Nesta was still seated, looking faintly stunned.

He didn't care.

He didn't care, because now he had _hope_. Hope that all was not lost. That Feyre might _come back_.

That hope ran aground on the icebergs that were Nesta's eyes - _so like Feyre's_. "Who do you think you are? Are you insane?"

Her tone was cutting, scornful, cruel. Rhys took an involuntary step back. "I was thinking-"

"You weren't thinking at all." She rose to her feet. "You still aren't. You barge into my house and expect me to speak cordially with you on the topic of _resurrection_? As though you know anything about it?" She curled her lip into a sneer. "You are an _idiot_ , Rhysand Night.

"Allow me to enlighten you," she went on, slamming her hands down on the desk and leaning forwards, "about this subject. Resurrection is a bloody, violent process that requires brutally _killing someone_ in order to regain the life of the one you lost. And even then, it has complex spells and a temperamental nature and _no guarantee to work_. Do you really think that even if you _did_ manage to resurrect my sister, she would ever be able to look at you again for shame of what you did for her?"

Rhys glared, and jutted his chin out. He felt like a little boy when he was dealing with Nesta Archeron. "I didn't know," he said, then insisted, "I just want-"

"Feyre back. I know." Nesta sat back then, and looked at him from across the desk. Suddenly, inexplicably, she looked older. Mature. _Tired_. "I do too - Cauldron, she was my _sister_. But don't go talking about resurrection." The woman shook her head slightly; her lips quirked minutely. "Or Feyre will slap you when she sees you in the afterlife."

"How do you even know there _is_ an afterlife?" he found himself asking. Anything - _anything_ \- to keep from thinking about Feyre. "That I'll see her again?"

Nesta shrugged. She was being remarkably patient with him, Rhys noticed. It was like Feyre's death had forced her to assume some role that she'd always deferred to her sister: being mature, practical. _Caring_. "Where do you think ghosts come from?"

Rhys didn't have an answer for that.

There seemed nothing more to say, and Nesta's glare had dissolved into a pensive look, focused somewhere over his left shoulder anyway. He murmured his condolences and slipped away.

He see Nesta stand up slowly, nor plod round the desk to pick up a framed photograph on the shelf. A little girl grinned out of it, blue-grey eyes lighter than they would be in later years, her arms slung over the shoulders of her two older sisters. She was grinning, a wide, toothy smile, and looking somewhere off to the left of the camera. She'd still been full of dreams, then.

He didn't see Nesta put down the photo like it'd burned her hands, or see her face and body crumple inwards like the physical weight of grief was too much for her slim shoulders to bear.

And he certainly didn't see it when Nesta's sobs receded, and she stared out of the window into the endless blue sky again. A sparrow flitted just beyond the glass. He didn't hear her whisper.

"I have to believe in an afterlife. Because otherwise they're gone forever."


	16. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time goes on.

The day was bright and crisp and cold - autumn was no longer coming. It was _here_. It was here in all its multi-coloured glory, waving about fronds of red and gold. Varian shivered inside his coat, but ploughed on.

He _had_ promised to meet Amren, after all.

_Though this isn't exactly her sort of venue_ , he mused, glancing about him. The orchard was full of trees heavy with fruit - he'd already nearly broken his ankle three times tripping on some half-rotten pear or apple that littered the ground. He cursed under his breath as he did so again, then froze as he felt a prickling run up his spine.

There was something. . . _off_. . . about this place.

It was pretty - there was no denying that - but it seemed to _shimmer_ , like there was more to it than met the eye. Like people lurked just behind trees, watching him, the relative silence save for the twittering of birds belying the underlying offness. He'd never been in a place quite like this.

But it was just an orchard.

There was a crunching behind him, like footsteps on fallen leaves, and he whirled, eyes widening in panic, a gasp catching in his throat-

Only for his shoulders to droop when the path remained both empty and undisturbed. In relief, because it meant that no _ghouls_ or anything were following him, but also disappointment, because Amren wasn't here yet. . .

Where _was_ Amren?

Sure, she wasn't exactly the paragon of _punctuality_ , but she typically wasn't _this_ late - not to mention that he was in _her_ garden, technically. _Without her_. Which might not be so strange were she anyone else, but she was one of the most territorial people he knew, so would she be comfortable with this?

Her adoptive mother certainly seemed to think so - he would hope Elain did, anyway, considering she'd been the one to unlock the gates and let him in with a kind _"She's waiting for you"_ \- but something about this situation seemed. . . off. Just like the orchard.

Varian groaned. _Everything_ felt off.

With yet another quiet curse under his breath, he resolved to keep walking, pulling his coat tighter around himself. It _was_ a beautiful day, even if the temperature didn't seem inclined to match with the aesthetics, and the little glade in the centre of the orchard that he'd reached was a nice place to stop and catch his breath. . .

Except that there was a gravestone in the centre of it.

Varian froze, eyes wide, and he mouthed out the words carved into the stone as he read them. _Feyre Marie Archeron_. The headstone was so polished as to appear brand new, but the date of death was a little over two years previous.

He'd heard of Feyre Archeron - just as he'd heard of Nesta and Elain before he met them. She'd been a witch, from a family of witches. A _bloodline_ of witches.

He glanced around the orchard, which, now that he thought about it, had a distinctly _magical_ feel to it. _Witchcraft. . ._

When he turned back to the grave, he screamed.

There was a young woman sitting atop it.

A pale blue, _transparent_ young woman, so instead of asking more pertinent questions such as "Who are you?" and "Why are you in Amren's orchard?" he instead squawked, "Why are you _glowing_?"

The woman - pale skin, narrow nose, round cheeks, strangely. . . familiar? Had he met her before? - raised an eyebrow at the question. "Because I'm dead."

"Um." Varian blinked. Whatever he'd been prepared to encounter in the odd orchard Amren had made him visit, it was _not_ the spectre of a dead woman. He flicked his eyes down to her chest, where a dark stain was spread over her blouse. It looked like a gunshot wound. "Oh."

The side of her mouth quirked into some approximation of a smile; she leaned back, putting out her hands to keep herself balanced lest she - _could_ an incorporeal ghost fall off a rock? He pondered it for a moment, but ultimately dismissed it.

It occurred to Varian that she was waiting for him to do something.

"Um," he repeated. "Who are you?"

She grinned, and nodded at the words on the headstone she sat on. He read the name again, despite her swinging legs and oh Cauldron he could see right through them, right through her blue, glowing legs no he wasn't freaking out at all-

" _You're_ Feyre Archeron? Nesta and Elain's sister?"

She nodded. "Yup."

"You don't look much older than me or Amren."

She scowled good-naturedly - a contortion of the face that more resembled a smile than a frown. "I was their younger sister. And I was a few years older than you when I died; I just always looked younger."

"Oh."

She cocked her head. "I assume you're Varian?" He nodded. "Amren's told me a lot about you."

"Um. . ." He ignored that for the sake of his dignity - _Amren talks about me!_ \- and cast around for something to say - _anything_ to say - only to land rather pathetically on: "So, you spend lots of time in the world of the living?"

She nodded, her face perfectly serious. "Oh, yes. I spend more time with the living than I do with the dead. My friends on the other side are starting to get a little offended."

That statement, the way her lips pressed together briefly. . . Varian blinked once. Twice. "You're messing with me."

Her smile turned her eyes to crescents. "Maybe."

He sighed. "What am I doing here?"

The mirth drained from Feyre's face. "I just wanted to meet you. I. . ." She waved her hand as she trailed off, like she was trying to physically grasp the word she was looking for. "I've been a. . . counsellor. . . of sorts, I suppose, to Amren for the past few years - ever since my sister adopted her, at least - but I can't. . . _be there_ for her, for obvious reasons. Not like I want to be. So I guess. . . I just wanted to meet the person she'd spoken so much about."

_She's waiting for you_ , Elain had said.

She hadn't been talking about Amren.

"Oh." He was being the epitome of articulate today, really. "Do you think I have a chance?"

She squinted at him for a second. "Meh. It's a fifty-fifty chance." She must have seen his disappointment, because she quickly followed it with, "But hey, that's fifty more than most people get. This is Amren we're talking about here."

He had to laugh at that. Silence fell - a companionable one.

"Enjoying your chat?"

Varian whirled at the voice. His heart leapt into his throat when he saw Amren emerge from among the trees, choppy dark hair thrown back in a ponytail and neck festooned with jewellery. Jewellery that - Varian thought with no small surge of pride - _he_ had given her.

"Very much so," Feyre replied. There was earnesty in her voice. "Although I think that it's come to an end now. Are you going to show him to manor?"

Amren glanced at him sideways. He caught her eye, and raised an inquiring eyebrow. "I was planning on it, yeah," she admitted.

"Carry a message back to Elain for me?"

Amren nodded. "'Course."

"Tell her that her and Azriel's wedding ceremony was beautiful. And also that she may want to take a pregnancy test." There was a stunned pause, into which Feyre added, "Make sure Nesta is out of earshot when you tell her that last part."

Amren smirked. "Good point."

* * *

It was only later - nine months later - that Nesta asked, "How did you manage to spot that Elain was pregnant before Elain herself did?"

Feyre, from her stance above the baby's cradle, replied absently as she watched the child try to catch her intangible finger. "I've just always been fairly good at a range of general stuff. Spotting things. Practical shit no one really needs. I studied Astrophysics, Fine Arts and Witchcraft _at the same time_ for Cauldron's sake. I'm ridiculous."

"Jack of all trades," her sister quipped.

"Master of none," Feyre replied, more focused on entertaining Elain's daughter with the light that splayed from her fingertips than the conversation. Not for the first time, she reached to pick the little girl up, but her hands went right through her.

She blinked away tears.

_I just want to hold my niece_.

_Please, Cauldron, won't you just let me hold my niece?_

It wasn't likely. Feyre couldn't hold her now, and she knew she never would.

Nesta wandered over to the cradle. She glanced down at the child, swaddled up in her blankets and staring unabashedly, before glancing up to meet Feyre's gaze. Feyre couldn't look away.

"But better than a master of one," she said softly.

Feyre could looked away then, and did when thunder crashed outside and the baby began to cry. Nesta lifted her out of the cradle. "Shhh, little Fey, it'll be alright," she cooed.

Feyre looked out the window to watch fat droplets of rain run down the glass. Though the cloud cover was opaque and total, she searched for the stars anyway, triangulating in her mind where each of them would be, using her imagination to superimpose their image over what she actually saw.

Feyre plotted that the Morning Star would, by now, hang directly above the patch of trees surrounding her grave.

_Technically, the Morning Star's a planet_ , Rhys's voice said into her head. It didn't matter.

She couldn't see it - she couldn't see any of the stars. That didn't matter either.

Feyre closed her eyes, looked up at the stars, and wished.


End file.
